Ten South Asian innovators and entrepreneurs were awarded The 2006 Global Indus Technovators Awards for their outstanding contributions in their respective fields. Drs. Adam Rasheed (GE), Rajeev Ram (MIT) and Aref Chowdhury (Lucent) were the winners in the area of Materials/Devices while Drs. Krishna Kumar (Tufts University), Shiladitya Sengupta (Harvard) and Anita Goel (Nanobiosym) were honored for their work in the area of Biotech/Med/ Healthcare.  The awards for grassroots development/ energy were awarded to Mr.  Sameer Sawarkar (Neurosynaptic Communications) and Dr. Vikram Akula (SKS Microfinance) while Dr. Anuj Batra (Texas Instruments) and Rajit Manohar (Achronix Semiconductor) shared the awards for Information Technology.

The awards were presented at a ceremony held at the Bartos Theater (MIT) on December 4, 2006. This award helps raise the awareness of the work done by South Asians and the Indian Business Club of MIT must be commended for creating this award.

The directors of the Indian Business Club, Ashish Kar, Lavanya Marla and Varun Ramanujam, were very pleased with the nominations they received. “We received over a hundred nominations. It was a wonderful experience to get to know the excellent work that is being done by many South Asians around the globe.”

The screening committee consisted of graduate students, researchers and other professionals from the Boston area who helped to identify potential nominees. The members consisted of Ajay Deshpande (MIT), Karun Bakshi (MIT), Manoj Manghwani (Portland State University), Anoop Rao (AgaMatrix), Sreeja Gopal (MIT), Nidhi Srivastav (MIT), Vijay Shilpiekandula (MIT), Sreekar Bhaviripudi (MIT), Raghuveer Makala (RPI), Anupam Rastogi (Motorola) and Koundinya Singaraju (MGH). The judges were Prof. Raju Kucherlapati (Harvard), Ms, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw (Biocon), Prof. Mert Flemings (MIT), Dr. Venu Vasudevan (Motorola), Dr. Irwin Jacobs (Qualcomm), Dr. Arun Netravali ( Lucent), Mr. S. Ramadorai (TCS), Dr. Abhijit Banerjee (MIT), and Dr. Pawan Sinha (MIT).

Mr. Ray Kurzweil presented the keynote address. He gave an insightful talk on The Law of Accelerating Returns. This was followed by a panel discussion moderated by Prof. Alex (sandy) Pentland, Media Lab, MIT, with all the awardees serving on the panel.

Click here to learn more about the awardees.

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