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Dr. Prabhakar Raghavan, Vice President for Strategic Technologies,Google, USA (1981/BT/EE).Dr. Prabhakar Raghavan obtained his B.Tech. in Electrical Engineering from IIT Madras in 1981, his M.S. (ECE) from University of California – Santa Barbara in 1982, and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California – Berkeley in 1986. He served as Senior VP and Head of Yahoo! Labs since 2005, and recently took up a position as Vice President for Strategic Technologies, Google.Dr. Raghavan is one of the rare individuals who have excelled in academic research, technical leadership and…

Dr. V. Sumantran, Vice Chairman, Hinduja Automotive Ltd., Chennai (1981/BT/AE).Dr. Sumantran obtained his B.Tech. in Aerospace Engineering from IIT Madras in 1981, his M.S. in Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University, and his Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from Virginia Tech. He also has a Master’s Degree in Management of Technology from Rensselaer Polytechnic. He is Executive Vice-Chairman of Hinduja Automotive, UK. He leads the Group’s expansion strategy including sectors such as Light Commercial Vehicles, Construction Equipment, IT, Defence, Aerospace and Technologies.Dr. Sumantran…

Dr. Ashok S. Krishna, Vice President of Technology for Global Downstream, Chevron Corp., USA (1974/BT/CH).Dr. Ashok S. Krishna (aka S. Krishnaswamy) obtained his B.Tech. in Chemical Engineering from IIT Madras in 1974, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts. His work on “Diffusional Influences on Catalyst Deactivation Rates” is now part of undergraduate texts in Chemical Reaction Engineering. He also completed his MBA from University of Pittsburgh in 1983. Dr. Ashok Krishna is in his 35th year of service at Chevron Corporation.Dr. Krishna was, and…

Ms. Uma Ghurka, Technical Director, Thermopads Pvt. Ltd. & Managing Director, Thermo Cables Ltd., Hyderabad (1975/BT/EE).Ms. Uma Ghurka graduated with a B.Tech. degree in Electrical Engineering in 1975, and boldly took the road less travelled, deciding to explore opportunities to develop and manufacture new products. She identified a business opportunity in the area of flexible heating systems. The first prototypes of the thermal heating pads were fabricated in a small workshop in Mumbai. Encouraged by the response from early customers, she set up her own manufacturing facility,…

Dr. Balaji Sampath, Founder and CEO, AID INDIA, Chennai (1994/BT/EC).Dr. Sampath obtained his B.Tech. degree in EC from IIT Madras in 1994. As a Ph.D. student in the U.S., he was involved in inspiring a large number of Indian students and professionals and forming chapters of the Association for India’s Development (AID) in over 25 cities. After he completed his Ph.D., he chose to return to India to work on education and village development.He is the founder and CEO of AID INDIA, a non-profit working on children’s education. He has built a team of 400 fulltime activists, 3000 village teachers…

Dr. Ramanathan Guha obtained his B.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Madras in 1986 and went on to do his M.S. in Mechanical Engineering at University of California, Berkeley, and  his Ph.D. in Computer Science at Stanford.Dr. Guha has made seminal contributions that have revolutionized the use of the web, and created structures that have enabled us to organize the vastly different data formats that exist on the web. Working together with the W3C, Dr. Guha was responsible for creation of the RDF family of standards that form the basis for metadata on the web. He is the inventor of RDF…

Dr. S. Gopalakrishnan obtained his B.E in Civil Engineering from Visveswariah College of Engineering, University of Bangalore in First class with Distinction. At IIT Madras, he obtained an M.Tech in Applied Mechanics and was a Gold Medalist. He went on to complete his Ph.D in Aeronautics and Astronautics at Purdue University, Indiana, USA.Dr. Gopalakrishnan is an acknowledged expert in Spectral Finite Element Methods (SFEM), Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) and Wave Propagation in Structures. He has helped SFEM grow both nationally and internationally, and has won many honors. He has…

Dr. Kumar Sivarajan obtained his B.Tech. in Electrical Engineering from IIT Madras in 1987, and went on to do his M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, USA.Dr. Kumar Sivarajan is one of the pioneers in the field of optical networking. He has made fundamental research contributions to the architecture of optical networks in a series of papers published in IEEE Transactions from 1990 onwards. Optical networking was just emerging at that time, and Kumar’s work comprehensively covered all aspects of optical network design including topology…

Dr. Venky Harinarayan obtained his B.Tech in Computer Science from IIT Madras in 1988 and went on to do his Ph.D. in Computer Science at Stanford, USA.Venky is an investor, entrepreneur and leader in search and e-commerce. He is the co-founder of Cambrian Ventures and Kosmix. He also co-founded Junglee Corp., which pioneered Internet comparison shopping. Junglee was acquired by Amazon.com Inc. in 1998. Venky helped to create Amazon.com’s marketplace business, which was a disruptive and controversial idea that had never been done before. Marketplace is currently Amazon.com’s most profitable…

Dr. Hari Balakrishnan obtained his B.Tech in Computer Science from IIT Madras in 1993, and went on to do his M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science at University of California, Berkeley. His Ph.D. thesis on reliable data transport over wireless networks won the ACM doctoral dissertation award for best thesis in Computer Science in 1998.Dr. Balakrishnan  joined the EECS faculty at MIT in 1998, received tenure in 2003, and was promoted to a full professorship in 2006. He has been a leading  researcher and educator in Computer Science for more than a decade now, and has made important contributions…

Dr. Shankar Ramamurti obtained his B.Tech. in Electrical Engineering from IIT Madras in 1969, and  his Ph.D. in  Theoretical Physics from University of California, Berkeley in 1974.Dr. Ramamurti is a distinguished Particle-and Condensed Matter Physicist and a Chaired Professor at Yale University. He is also the first Indian after Nobel-Laureate Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar to be awarded the Harvard Junior Fellowship.  In 2009, Dr. Ramamurti was awarded the Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize from the American Physical Society for “Innovative applications of field theoretic techniques to quantum…

Dr. Anand Rajaraman obtained his B.Tech. in Computer Science from IIT Madras in 1993 and went on to do his M.S and Ph.D. in Computer Science at Stanford University, Palo Alto, USA.Anand is a serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist and an academic. He is the co-founder of Cambrian Ventures, a venture capital firm. His investments include Facebook, Aster Data Systems, Neoteris, India Infoline, YouSendIT, and several others. Anand was the co-founder and CTO of Junglee Corp., and played a key role in developing Junglee’s award- winning Virtual Database technology. Later, when Junglee was acquired…

Dr. Sailesh Krishna Rao obtained his B.Tech. in Electrical Engineering from IIT Madras in 1981, his M.S. from the State University of New York, Stony Brook, NY and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, CA, USA.For the first twenty years after education, Sailesh was primarily involved in the creation of new communications technologies in support of the Internet revolution. During this phase, he worked at AT&T Bell laboratories, and was the founder and President of Silicon Design Experts, Inc. where he led the specification and development of the world’s first single-…

Dr. Lalgudi V. Ramanathan obtained his B.Tech. in Metallurgy from IIT Madras in 1969. Later, he obtained his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Corrosion Science and Engineering from John Cass College of Science and Engineering, London.Dr. Ramanathan's interests took him to Brazil where he was invited to be a part of their then-nascent nuclear program as a young scientist in the Energy and Nuclear Research Institute. Over the next three decades, he established himself as an outstanding researcher, academician, consultant and technical manager, and is now considered a global authority in the field of…

Professor Krishnan Raghavachari has an internationally-recognized research program in theoretical and computational chemistry. He obtained his M.Sc. in Chemistry from IIT Madras in 1975. He joined Carnegie?Mellon University to work with Professor of Theoretical Chemistry and Nobel Laureate, Sir John Pople, and earned his Ph.D. in 1981. During his career, Prof. Raghavachari has developed a range of new theoretical methods and algorithms that have been instrumental in the widespread use of computational chemistry by non?experts. He has made many key contributions to the famous and widely-used "…