Fifteen people of Indus origin were presented with the Global Indus Technovators Awards in recognition of their work in areas that are at the cutting-edge of technology with far-reaching applications.  The award presentation was made on November 17, at a ceremony held at the Wong Auditorium at the Sloan School of Management at MIT.  Tom Leighton, the Founder & Chief Scientist of Akamai Technologies gave the keynote address.

The awards were instituted in 2003 by the Indian Business Club, an initiative of Sangam (Indian Student Organization) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, USA.  Owing to MIT’s technological vantage point, the awards are designed to leverage the technical expertise of people of South Asian origin, and retain the scientific temper in the coming decades. This effort not only identifies potential role models for South Asian youth around the world, but also spreads awareness and provides a platform for showcasing the talents of young innovators who fall below the age of 40 years.  The chief organizers for the 2004 awards were Sumit Bhansali, Karun Bhakshi and Shailendra Yadav.

Nominations were invited from diverse fields including biotechnology, information technology, materials and devices, healthcare and medicine, grassroots development and energy. Sridhar G. Iyengar (AgaMatrix), Sanjay Sarma (Massachusetts Institute of Technology/OatSystems), Akhil Madhani (Walt Disney Imagineering, research and Development) and Kailas Narendran (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) won the awards in the areas of Materials and Devices. The awards in the areas of Biotech, Medicine and Healthcare went to  Ganesh Venkataraman (Momenta Pharmaceuticals) Sangeeta  Bhatia (University of California San Diego), Vamsi Mootha (Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard), Ravi Kamath (Harvard Medical School student/ MGH resident) and  Vijay Pande (Stanford University). The awards for Infotech was given to Kumar Sivarajan (Tejas Networks India Ltd.), Venu Govindaraju (University at Buffalo/CEDAR), Anand Chandrasekaran (Aeroprise Inc.), Vijay Manwani (Blade Logic). Sonal Shah (Center for American Progress/Indicorps) and Sandeep Pandey  (Asha for Education) won the awards for their work in their area of grassroots development.

“I  feel honored to receive this award. I am humbled by the work of my peers who are also receiving the award today” said Anand Chandrasekaran who won the award for his work on Mobile Workflow Management. Sangeeta Bhatia who won the award for her work in the area of hepatic tissue engineering was pleased to be recognized. “I am the only women engineer on this panel.  I hope this recognition of a South Asian women engineer will inspire other women to pursue a career in engineering”. The awards were presented by Ramesh Raskar(MERL) who won the award in 2003.

Ashok Boghani, Senior Vice President, Business Development of IntellectExchange moderated a panel discussion by the awardees where they fielded questions from the audience and Boghani.  Sridhar Iyengar from AgaMatrix stressed the value of the team in making a successful company. “It is not the idea but the fact that there is a team around it that makes the difference” said Iyengar.  Vijay Manwani of Bladelogic urged entrepreneurs to take failures in their strides. “Failures though difficult can teach you a lot. Every failure is a learning experience” said Manwani. Tom Leighton, founder and chief scientist of Akamai, gave an insightful keynote address describing the idea to IPO journey of the company in his talk titled “The Akamai Story – From Theory to Practice” 

The nominations for the 2005 awards will soon be open. To learn more about this award please visit their website at http://technovators.mit.edu.

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