Four Indian Americans are among 197 new members of the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a leading centre for independent policy research.

The new Indian American members are Sanjeev Arora of Princeton University, Sangeeta N Bhatia of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Renu Malhotra of the University of Arizona, and Ravindran Kannan of Microsoft Research Labs in Bangalore.

American Academy of Arts and Sciences is one of the oldest and most prestigious honorary societies and a leading center for independent policy research in the US. Election to the Academy is considered one of the nation's highest honours.

Theoretical computer scientist Sanjeev Arora, 47, who developed the PCP Theorem at Princeton University, is currently the Charles C Fitzmorris Professor of Computer Science at the same institution.

His research interests include computational complexity theory, uses of randomness in computation, probabilistically checkable proofs, computing approximate solutions to NP-hard problems, and geometric embeddings of metric spaces, India West reported.

Sangeeta N Bhatia, 47, a biological engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was inducted on the merit of her investigative research into the application of micro- and nano-technology for tissue repair and regeneration.

Ravindran Kannan, 62, serves as a principal researcher at Microsoft Research India, where he leads the algorithms research group.

He is also the first adjunct faculty of Computer Science and Automation Department of Indian Institute of Science.

Renu Malhotra, 54, is an American physicist known for her work on the orbital resonance between Pluto and Neptune.

The new class will be inducted at a ceremony on Oct 10 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.