Top industrialist Ratan N Tata has been inducted into the prestigious US National Academy of Engineering for his “outstanding contributions to industrial development in India and the world”.
He is one of 11 new foreign associates who would provide independent advice to the US federal Government on engineering and technology.Apart from Tata, the NAE has also inducted eight Indian-Americans who have distinguished themselves in several engineering disciplines.
They include Anant Agarwal, president, edX (online learning initiative of MIT and Harvard University) for contributions to shared-memory and multicore computer architectures; Murty P Bhavaraju, senior consultant, PJM Interconnection, Norristown, Pennsylvania for probabilistic reliability evaluation tools for large electric power systems; Ashok J Gadgil, director and senior scientist, environmental energy technologies division, lawrence Berkeley National laboratory for engineering solutions to the problems of potable water and energy in underdeveloped nations.
Others chosen include Ganesh Kailasam, research and development vice president with Dow Chemical Company, Freeport, Texas; Vijay Kumar, UPS foundation professor at University of Pennsylvania’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences; Bal Raj Sehgal, emeritus professor of nuclear power safety, at Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm; Pradeep S Sindhu, vice chairman, chief technical officer, and founder, Juniper Networks, Sunnyvale, California; and Krishna (Kris) P Singh, president and chief executive officer, Holtec International, Marlton, New Jersey.