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Ten young innovators of Indian origin, working at the cutting edge of technology, have been awarded the Global Indus Technovators Awards 2006, an initiative of the Indian Business Club (IBC) at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
This year’s winners are: Adam Rasheed, Rajeev Ram, Aref Chowdhury, Krishna Kumar, Shiladitya Sengupta, Anita Goel, Sameer Sawarkar, Vikram Akula, Anuj Batra and Rajit Manohar. IBC is a student-run organisation chaired by graduate students at MIT. It was established in 2002 as an initiative of Sangam, the Indian student’s organisation at MIT. Anita Goel (Nanobiosym Inc), Krishna Kumar (Tufts University) and Shiladitya Sengupta (MIT) won the awards in the area of biotechnology/medicine/healthcare.
Goel is the president of Nanobiosym Labs and Nanobiosym Diagnostics Inc, which focus on developing next-generation diagnostic capabilities. Kumar, chairperson of the department of chemistry at Tufts University, is an expert on peptide therapies and has authored patents with an immense potential to impact cancer management.
Sengupta, co-founder of Angenix Ltd won the award for one of his biggest innovations, the nano cell, according to a press release. Aref Chowdhury (Bell Labs), Rajeev V. Ram (MIT) and Adam Rasheed (GE) are the three recipients of the materials and devices awards.
Chowdhury is a technical staff member at Bell Labs and his innovations are in the field of nonlinear optics, a field critical to improving long-haul optical transport networks. Ram, currently a faculty member at MIT, is widely acknowledged for his work in the field of optoelectronics and is one of the pioneers in the semiconductor based laser science and technology. Rasheed, a research engineer at GE Global Research Center, is widely recognised for his work in the GE-NASA project on pulsed detection engine feeding an axial turbine, for which he received the innovator award.
Anuj Batra and Rajit Manohar (Achronix Semiconductor) won the award in the field of information technology. Batra, who currently works on highspeed digital communication technology at Texas Instruments (TI), is highly acknowledged for his developmental efforts in the rarefied ultra wideband (UWB) technology.
Manohar, cofounder of Achronix Semiconductor, is currently an associate professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University and is a pioneer in asynchronous semiconductor design.
The winners of this year’s Grassroots category award are Vikram Akula (SKS) and Sameer Sawarkar (Neurosynaptic Comm Ltd). Akula launched SKS Microfinance in 1998. It is one of the fastest growing microfinance organisations in the world, having provided over $33 million in loans and helping over 300,000 people in becoming economically self reliant. Sawarkar, founder of Neurosynaptic Communications Pvt, Ltd, works in the areas of remote medical diagnostics and telemedicine.
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