Know Our People - P.V. Viswanath

P.V. Viswanath, Ph. D, is Professor of Finance and New York Stock Exchange Scholar at Pace University’s Lubin School of Business where he teaches both graduate and undergraduate students. PV also serves as a consultant to the financial industry in the areas of margin policy and dividend policy, and has been a financial consultant to start-up businesses. He received his undergraduate degree in economics and statistics from the University of Bombay, his M.B.A in management science from the University of Kentucky, an M.B.A. in economics and management science and PhD in finance from the University of Chicago.

He is the author of numerous educational publications, research articles and papers. One of his recent articles is, “Bondholder-Stockholder Conflict: Contractual Covenants vs. Court-Mediated Ex-post Settling-Up,” which was published in The Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting. His research spans the areas of corporate finance, investments, insurance, Law and Economics and the application of economics to Jewish Law. PV has conducted professional development programs on Interest Rate Risk Management and Advanced Fixed Income Securities Management in Bangalore and Bombay, India, and has been an instructor at the New York Society of Security Analysts.

At Pace, he is also Director of the Global Portfolio Analysis Center (G-PACT).

Know our people - Dushyanthi

Dushyanthi - Model, singer, actress, and dancer

Dushyanthi's debut video "Many Men" has secured the #2 spot on the MTV DESI countdown, the #4 spot on MTV Tempo, and is in rotation on MTV Tr3s, ImaginAsian, and AVS tv. Vote for Dushyanthi on MTV Tr3s here.

Since the age of 5, Dushyanthi has been singing and dancing. Performance is her passion. "My grandmother was a music teacher in Sri Lanka so she always had my sisters and I singing Tamil songs while she played the piano and violin."

Born in Brooklyn, raised in Connecticut, Dushyanthi also was heavily influenced by the American sounds around her. "My music is urban/pop with a bit of Indian influence. We worked hard to get that fusion sounding right." Dushyanthi teamed up with well-known producer Mark Wilson (Destiny's Child, Will Smith, Brandy) and co-wrote every song with Wanda Lewis and Tre and LA (Tamia, Christina Milian). The result is a sound that people from all backgrounds can identify with.

From the age of 12, Dushyanthi trained intensively in vocal and dance classes. She studied ballet, hip-hop, and Indian dance. "I love to dance—hip-hop, belly dancing, Indian, salsa—I love all of it." She also spent years in acting classes—even dedicating herself to a program in musical theater at the Boston Conservatory.

All the while, Dushyanthi focused on college. "My parents always stressed the importance of education." Dushyanthi graduated summa cum laude from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst with a major in Psychology and a double minor in Women's Studies and Spanish.
After returning to NYC, Dushyanthi was approached by several top modeling agencies while working as an inner city youth counselor in SoHo. She quickly found modeling success with jobs including Savoy magazine, a bridal show for FOX, Redken hair, and many more. She then expanded her career into the realm of acting and landed spots on Sex and the City and a commercial for Showtime to name a few. Recently she wrote and directed a play infused with spoken word entitled Love Vibe with the help of Reg E. Gaines, writer of Tony Award winning musical Noise Funk.

Singer, dancer, actress, writer—Dushyanthi does it all. Her incredible beauty is matched by God-given talents, an amazing work ethic, and unstoppable drive. "I work hard at everything I do, I rely on my family to keep me grounded and I love being creative," she says. "I hope that when people hear my music, they just enjoy it." And they will. Dushyanthi is a unique talent in the music industry today.

Know our people - Vasugi V. Ganeshananthan

Vasugi V. Ganeshananthan, a fiction writer and journalist, lives in New York. She is a 2002 graduate of Harvard College. In 2005, she received an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and in 2005-2006, she was the Bennett Fellow and writer-in-residence at Phillips Exeter Academy.

In 2007, she graduated from the new MA program at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, where she was a Bollinger Fellow specializing in Arts & Culture journalism. She has written and reported for The Atlantic Monthly, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Sepia Mutiny, and The American Prospect, among others. She is the vice president of the South Asian Journalists Association and a member of the graduate board of The Harvard Crimson.

This fall, she is a writer-in-residence at Skidmore College. Random House published her first novel, Love Marriage, in April.

About the Novel - Love Marriage

"In this globe-scattered Sri Lankan family, we speak only of two kinds of marriage. The first is the Arranged Marriage. The second is the Love Marriage. In reality, there is a whole spectrum in between, but most of us spend years running away from the first towards the second"

Yalini, the daughter of Sri Lankan immigrants who left their collapsing country and married in America, finds herself caught between the history of her ancestors and her own modern world. But when she is summoned to Toronto to help care for her dying uncle, Kumaran, a former member of the militant Tamil Tigers, she is forced to see that violence is not a relic of the Sri Lankan past, but very much a part of her Western present.

While Kumaran's loved ones gather around him to say goodbye, Yalini traces her family's roots—and the conflicts facing them as ethnic Tamils—through a series of marriages. Now, as Kumaran's death and his daughter's politically motivated nuptials edge closer, in the tradition of her family, Yalini too must decide where she stands.

Lyrical and innovative, V. V. Ganeshananthan's novel brilliantly unfolds how a new generation of war both forms and fractures families.

Praise for Love Marriage

"Ganeshananthan has created a slow-burning and beautifully written debut in Love Marriage. It is an evocative examination of Sri Lankan cultural mores, and the way one family is affected by love and war."
—The Financial Times

"Innovative….this is an ambitious family drama about an underreported part of the world, filled with well-shaded characters [and] gorgeous flourish…Buy it."
—New York Magazine

"...Love Marriage is surprisingly feminine and fable-like in its inquiry into chilling moral choices... some lines are as evocative as forgotten tunes..."
—Washington Post Book World

"...at its best and simplest, Ganeshananthan can be profoundly moving. She captures the pain of exile poignantly."
—The San Francisco Chronicle

Know our people - Mani Subramanian

Mani Subramanian - Chairman & CEO - Keane Inc.

Mani Subramanian is the chairman and CEO of Keane. Mani founded the company IT Solutions, subsequently re-branded as Caritor, as a one-man operation in 1993, and moved on to create a successful global entity with a solid foundation for significant growth over the coming years. In 2007, Caritor achieved yet another milestone by combining with Keane. The company now operates under the Keane brand name.

Mani's vision and core values have been the driving force for the company and its success since its inception. His unwavering focus on developing relationships and partnering with clients has given rise to an organization that provides high-quality services to Global 1000 organizations across the world. The ongoing success of these long-term relationships provides the foundation for future growth of the Keane business.

Mani has more than 36 years of experience in the global information technology industry, managing divisions and businesses in the UK, India, and the United States. Prior to starting Caritor, Mani was the president of Wipro Systems and was responsible for leading Wipro through a period of significant growth in its IT offshoring business. Before joining Wipro, Mani was part of the top management team at Tata Consultancy Services and was instrumental in growing their UK operation. Widely regarded as a turnaround architect in the IT corporate world, Mani has made several business-related contributions of major significance in the field of computer software. He has been the subject of numerous articles in professional publications in India.

Mani holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai and a post-graduate diploma in business administration (PGDBA) from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

Know our people - Srivats Sampath

Srivats Sampath is President and CEO of Mercora, the world's largest and legal music radio network. Srivats was most recently with McAfee.com (NASDAQ:MCAF) before merging the company with Network Associates (NYSE:NET) in October 2002.

He served as McAfee.com's founder, President and Chief Executive Officer from December 1998, bringing over 15 years of experience serving in management and executive roles in the computer industry. Prior to founding McAfee.com, Srivats was with Netscape Communications, a provider of Internet software and services, as Vice President of Product Marketing. From June 1993 to June 1996, Srivats served as the President and Chief Executive Officer of Discussions Corporation, a company he founded to develop email-based groupware solutions.

Srivats also worked as Director of Product Marketing for Network and Security Products for Central Point Software, Inc., and was the Chief Architect and co-founder of the LAN Enhancement Operations and Microcomputer Communications Division of Intel Corporation. Srivats serves on the boards of Determina and as Chairman of Voltage Security.

He received his B.S. degree in Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering from Madras University in India. Srivats also holds multiple patents in delivering security-as-a-service and contextual internet advertising.

Know our people - Srinidhi Varadarajan

Srinidhi Varadarajan is the director of Terrascale computing facility and an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech. He is also the architect of System X, one of the world's fastest and least expensive supercomputers.

Achievements & Awards

He was the lead designer of Virginia Tech’s supercomputer, System X, ranked in November 2003 as the fastest supercomputer at any University in the world. He conceived the idea to use off-the-shelf commercial products to design a supercomputer and built his system in a little less than three months. He targeted price/performance since he did not have the hundreds of millions of dollars available to him that it took to build the world's current top two supercomputers.

The number one supercomputer, Japan’s Earth Simulator, was estimated to cost between $250 and $350 million, and the Department of Energy’s ASCI-Q, a dedicated weapons facility in the number two slot, had an estimated construction cost of $215 million. When System X was rated number three, Varadarajan had accomplished his goal for a mere $5.2 million, an unbelievable price in the field of high-performance supercomputing. This low cost represents a paradigm shift in supercomputing; it means that based on Varadarajan’s work, other major research universities and enterprises can build their own supercomputer.

Dr. Varadarajan is the recipient of the ComputerWorld Honors Award in the Science Category 2004, a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation, the Egg Factory Technology Innovation award and a Faculty Fellow award from the College of Engineering, Virginia Tech. Technology Review, MIT’S magazine of innovation honored him in 2004 as one of the top 100 (TR100) young innovators transforming technology.

Personal life

His reading interests are in the, natural sciences - mainly physics, philisophy, international politics/foreign policy and evolutionary biology. In fiction, he likes the classics of which he has a collection of reprints of first editions.

He listens to Indian classical music, both Hindustani and Carnatic. Ravi Shankar's compositions are his favorite, particularly his series with the London Philharmonic. Other favorites include Asad Ali Khan - Rudra Veena, Shiv kumar Sharma - Santoor, N. Rajam, Kunnaikudi Vaidyanathan - violin, and Zakir Hussein and Alla Rakha on the tabla. Among vocalists, he listens to Bhimsen Joshi, Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Balamurali Krishnan and Maharajapuram Santhanam. In light music, he prefers old Hindi songs from the 1950s to the 70's, and classic rock - Doors, Pink Floyd, Nirvana, Queen and Led Zeppelin.

Other hobbies include flying and home-brew electronics, particularly microprocessor kits, and discrete solid state amplifiers.

"I still swear by the fidelity of a high power transistor driving a decent pair of Maggies - I use the larger 20.1s and they sound great. One of these days maybe I'll get around to seeing why the audiophiles keep raving about vacuum tubes :-)."

Know our people - Rangaswamy Srinivasan

Rangaswamy Srinivasan

Rangaswamy Srinivasan is inventor at IBM Research. One of the famous inventions he has contributed to is LASIK.
Born Feb 28 1929

Far Ultraviolet Surgical and Dental Procedures
Patent Number(s) 4,784,135

Inducted 2002

In 1981, Rangaswamy Srinivasan discovered that an ultraviolet excimer laser could etch living tissue in a precise manner with no thermal damage to the surrounding area. He named the phenomenon Ablative Photodecomposition (APD)

Invention Impact

Srinivasan and his co-inventors ran tests using the excimer laser and a conventional, green laser to etch organic matter. They discovered that while the green laser produced rough incisions, damaged by charring from the heat, the excimer laser produced clean, neat incisions. In 1983, Srinivasan collaborated with an ophthalmic surgeon to develop APD to etch the cornea. It resulted in a procedure to correct vision known today as LASIK surgery. Since the introduction of LASIK, millions of people have taken advantage of this procedure that reduces dependency on corrective lenses.

Biography

Dr. Srinivasan obtained his B.Sc in Chemistry and his M.S. in Physical Chemistry from the University of Madras, India. He received his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from the University of Southern California in 1956. After post-doctoral work at the California Institute of Technology and at the University of Rochester, he joined the IBM, T. J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY as a research staff member. He devoted the entire span of thirty years at the IBM Research Center to fundamental investigations on the action of ultraviolet photons from mercury lamps as well as excimer lasers on organic materials including small molecules, polymers and tissue. Since 1990 he has continued this work at his own company, UVTech Associates.

In addition to numerous awards received during his career at IBM, Dr. Srinivasan received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1965, the 1997 National Award for Creative Invention from the American Chemical Society, the G.H. Esselen Award for Chemistry in the Public Interest in 1997 and the 1997 Indian Scientist of the Year Award from the Association of Indians in the U.S.

Know our people - Anand Chandrasekher

Anand Chandrasekher (born 1963, Madras, India)

Anand Chandrasekher is senior vice president and general manager of Intel Corporation's Ultra Mobility Group. This group is responsible for low power Intel® Architecture products, ultra-mobile PC's, mobile internet devices, smart mobile and hand-held market segments. Chandrasekher's responsibilities include strategic direction, platform planning, design, development, marketing and business management for this segment. Chandrasekher's team is responsible for developing the technologies behind the Intel® Atom™ processor and Intel® Centrino® Atom™ processor product families.

Prior to his current assignment, Chandrasekher was senior vice president and general manager of Intel's Sales and Marketing Group; in this capacity, he had responsibility for worldwide sales and marketing operations and served Intel's global customer and market needs.

Previously, Chandrasekher was vice president and general manager of the Mobile Platforms Group. Chandrasekher led the team responsible for the architecture, design, development and marketing of Intel's platform solutions for the mobile computing segment. He led the team that delivered Intel® Centrino® Processor Technology to the market; and, under his leadership the mobile group became the fastest growing business unit at Intel. He was promoted to Intel corporate vice president in 2003.

Prior to his Mobile Platforms Group role, Chandrasekher was vice president of the Intel Architecture Group and general manager of the Intel Architecture Marketing Group, where he led strategic planning and marketing activities for Intel's enterprise, mobile and desktop platform products – in this capacity, he was responsible for the launch and ramp of the Intel® Pentium® 4 processor family of products. In 1997, Chandrasekher formed and led Intel's Workstation Platform Group and was its general manager through 1999 – under his leadership, Intel's workstation business grew into a multi-billion dollar business. From 1995 to 1997 he served as technical assistant to Craig Barrett, current Intel Chairman of the Board.

Chandrasekher earned his bachelor's degree in computer science and a master's degree in engineering from Cornell University. He received an MBA from Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management. Chandrasekher remains an active supporter of Cornell's programs and of the American India Foundation; he is an elected member of Cornell's Council of Trustees. He has been with Intel since 1988.

Know our people - Murli Thirumale

Murli Thirumale – CEO, Ocarina NetworksMurli Thirumale leads the overall strategy and business execution at Ocarina.

Prior to co-founding Ocarina, Thirumale was Group Vice President and GM of the Citrix Advanced Solutions Group, where he led the SSL-VPN division (acquired via Net6) to the number #1 unit market share and #2 revenue share position in eighteen months.

As the CEO and co-founder of Net6, Thirumale led the company from its inception through acquisition. He provided the vision and strategy for leveraging the company's unique network focus and approach to SSL-VPN security, IP telephony/VOIP applications and data mobility. Under his leadership, Net6 attracted $17 million in venture capital funding, secured OEM relationships with Cisco, Avaya and Nortel, and was acquired by Citrix Systems.

Prior to Net6, Thirumale was executive vice president and general manager of Symmetricom where he founded a new broadband division for the company and established Symmetricom as the undisputed leader in telecom network timing. Prior to Symmetricom, Thirumale also spent fifteen years at Hewlett-Packard where he served as general manager of Timing Solutions for Communications Operation. Thirumale also founded two new business units at Hewlett-Packard: Network Synchronization and OEM Wireless Timing.

Thirumale holds a BS in Electrical Engineering with distinction from the Institute of Technology-BHU in India and an MBA from Northwestern's Kellogg Graduate School of Management where he was an Austin Distinguished Scholar.

Know our people - Brintha Vasagar

Brintha Vasagar - Miss Philadelphia 2008

A Hatfield native, Brintha has been involved with volunteerism since the age of 9 when she decided to skip recess to work with special education classes. In the following years, she continued on this trend: logging over 200 hours as a candystriper at North Penn Hospital, attending hundreds of events as Treasurer of the North Penn High School Key Club, and becoming involved with both the Boys and Girls Club of Lansdale and Big Brothers/Big Sisters of America.

As a National Merit Scholar and Salutatorian of her high school class of 1137 students, Brintha also managed to find time to excel academically. She received medals of distinction as a Mathcounts Mathlete and led her team to a state championship as Captain of the Academic Decathalon team. In addition, she received a prestigious full scholarship to attend the Pennsylvania Governor’s School of the Sciences to conduct research on plasmid transference. In what free time she had, Brintha found herself heavily involved with Odyssey of the Mind, a robotics competition, where she found herself Team Captain for four years and led her team to the State finals each year. She also competed in piano competitions for thirteen years, where she won numerous blue ribbons and trophies.

After graduating from North Penn High School in 2002, Brintha continued her studies at Georgetown University where she double majored in Biology and Psychology and completed a thesis entitled “Teaching Biology through the Georgetown University/McKinley Technology High School Partnership: The Mutual Benefits for College and High School Students.” It was through this thesis that she was able to spend a year teaching in an inner city school and really fall in love with education. Brintha continued on to help establish GOLE (Georgetown Outreach on Learning and Education) and to work with the Educational Community Outreach Program as an Anatomy and Physiology teacher for students identified as “most at risk to not graduate from high school.” She credits this as one of her most meaningful experiences as several students began the course hating science and left telling her that they wanted to grow up and be doctors just like her!

In December 2004, Brintha found herself in Sri Lanka during the tsunami which devastated Southeast Asia. She was able to work in refugee camps and offer medical support for 2 weeks before returning to the U.S. Upon her return, she embarked on an email campaign to raise awareness and funds and before she knew it, her story had traveled the globe and people were more than willing to give. One soon-to-be bride decided to ask her guests to donate rather than bring wedding gifts. As she said, “Why do we need another blender when people have nothing?” For her efforts, Brintha was invited to the 2004 Presidential Inauguration and to speak before various members of Congress and the United Nations about what Americans do to help the rebuilding process.

Now having a profound interest in international health, Brintha decided to join the Ross University School of Medicine Scholars Program, which enabled her to study abroad on the small island of Dominica for sixteen months. She had been Treasurer of the MESAHI Project (which works to build and maintain an AIDS clinic in rural Kenya) while at Georgetown, and was able to continue working with AIDS/HIV awareness while in Dominica. Her favorite moments of medical school include visiting local schools and teaching students about HIV prevention.

These experiences with volunteering have led to the platform Brintha will champion as Miss Philadelphia 2008 - GIVE: Get Involved, Volunteer in Education. Over the next year, she hopes to make it easier for member of the community to get involve in their schools. Moreover, she hopes to encourage our youth to GIVE back to their schools by tutoring younger students. Brintha says that her priority for the year is to “strengthen our community by empowering our youth with knowledge.”

Know our people - Kavitark Ram Shriram

Kavitark Ram Shriram is the founding board member of Google and one of the first investors in Google.

He earlier served as an officer of Amazon.com working for Jeff Bezos, founder & CEO. Ram came to Amazon.com in August, 1998, when Amazon acquired Junglee, an online comparison shopping firm of which Ram was president. While at Amazon, Ram helped grow the customer base during its early high growth phase in 1998/1999.

Before Junglee and Amazon, Ram was a member of the Netscape executive team, joining them in 1994, before they shipped products or posted revenue.Kavitark Shriram ranked 583 at Forbes worlds list of billionaires 2007 and ranked 677 on 2008.

Ram is an MBA graduate of the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, also Bachelor of Science Degree from University of Madras and a founding board member of Google and 247customer.com. Ram also serves on the boards of Plaxo, Zazzle and PodShow. Ram also serves on the advisory board of Naukri.com, a leading classifieds site in India which has leading marketplaces in jobs, matrimony and real estate serving the Indian market.

Shriram said there is no magic formula to success. Rather, it comes from continual small ``block and tackle moves. Oh, and it helps to have a little book called ``Ram's Book of Mistakes to guide the way.He currently owns 3.4 million shares of Google.

Know our people - Sukanya Krishnan

Sukanya Krishnan (born August 2, 1975) is an Indian-born American news anchor for the 7-9 am segments of the CW 11 Morning News on WPIX in New York City, paired with John Muller.

In 2006, Krishnan won her first Emmy for On-Camera Achievement (News Anchor/Host) from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS). She was the first Indian American woman to work in the New York market at a local network affiliate.

Born in Madras, India (now Chennai), Krishnan grew up on Staten Island and attended New Dorp High School, where amongst her classmates was Wu Tang Clan member, Method Man. In 1993 she graduated from Dickinson College with a bachelor's degree in Spanish, and as president of the senior class.In addition to her Emmy Award, Krishnan has also won the Project Impact (formerly Indian American Political Awareness Committee)'s "Creating A Voice" Award, and a Distinguished Broadcast Journalist commendation from the Office of the Comptroller of the City of New York, for her work covering the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Her community volunteering includes being a celebrity judge for the 2005 Iron Skillet Cookoff.

In March 2004, Krishnan played a reporter covering the mob on the "Two Tonys" episode of HBO's The Sopranos.In July 2006, she was honored at the FeTNA (Federation of Tamil Sangams of North America) annual convention held in New York City. On October 9, 2007, Krishnan was named one of the 2007 Power Women by New York Moves Magazine, at an awards ceremony hosted by Academy Award-winning actress Mira Sorvino and MC'd by comedian Judy Gold.

Krishnan is fluent in Tamil, Spanish and English. On the CW11 Morning News of September 17, 2007, she announced her marriage to Eric Schroeder; she lives with her husband in Manhattan.

Know our people - Raj Rajaratnam

Raj Rajaratnam is the Founder and Managing General Partner of The Galleon Group. He is a SriLankan born Tamilian. The Galleon Group manages over $5 billion, making it one of the largest hedge funds in the world.Prior to founding Galleon, Mr. Rajaratnam was President and Chief Operating Officer of Needham & Company, an investment bank focused on the technology and healthcare industries.

He joined Needham in 1985 as an analyst in the electronics sector and became Managing Director of Investment Research in 1987. In 1989 he became Chief Operating Officer, and in 1991 was appointed President.Prior to joining the Needham & Company, Mr. Rajaratnam was a lending officer in the High Technology Group at Chase Manhattan Bank. He holds an MBA in Finance from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

Know our people - Kumar Mahadeva

Kumar Mahadeva is the founder, chairman, and Former CEO of Cognizant Technology Solutions (Nasdaq: CTSH), who was born in Sri Lanka and held positions with the BBC, McKinsey, AT&T, and Dun & Bradstreet before founding Cognizant — originally a joint venture with Dun & Bradstreet — in 1994.

Cognizant provides application outsourcing services and 24/7 software project management for a small but intensely loyal client base of large U.S. and European companies. Widely praised in the business press for its innovation and growth, the company reached $229.1 million in revenues in 2002, and has a market cap of $1.7 billion. In the most recent quarter, revenues increased 60 percent.

Based in Teaneck, New Jersey, Cognizant has established twelve software development centers across India. “Most U.S. companies approach overseas markets primarily as places to sell their goods,” he observes. “What’s different about our business model is that we’ve leveraged the global talent pool, kept our costs low, and stayed on top of new technologies that can benefit our clients.”

Mahadeva enjoys being an entrepreneur and is excited about the innovative possibilities of Internet technology. “With the Internet, one can collaborate with people halfway around the world throughout the entire business process,” he notes. “That’s one key area we’re focusing on for the future.”

Know our people - Swamy Kandan

Swamy Kandan, an Indian and present resident in Philadelphia, USA, made his first feature film Catch Your Mind. He completed a professional course on Film Making from New York University and made a short film called Secondary Impacts based on Sept 11 Attacks. He is presently planning a thriller which is in pre-production stage. His Catch Your Mind is scheduled to hit the theaters in US on 19th September. The following is what Swamy Kandan has to say about his film.

“Catch Your Mind,” an independent family drama expected to motivate teens to find comfort in their loved ones and in exciting new venues like science and technology, opens Sept. 19, 2008 in select theaters in the U.S. and Canada.

Making of Catch Your Mind
Robotics, the science and technology of robots, serves as the backdrop to a film about searching for the self-confidence and life skills it takes to survive adolescence. A story about peer pressure, young love and teenage angst, “Catch Your Mind” is a must-see movie any teen or parent can relate to.
The film’s main character, Bruce, is an excellent student who was raised in a loving home. But somewhere in the middle of his search for self identity, Bruce falls into the wrong crowd and quickly finds his world has turned upside down. After Bruce loses interest in academics and falls into a self-destructive pattern of underage drinking, his mother and his childhood friend recognize his struggles and entice him to join his high school’s NASA sponsored robotics team. Then everything changes.
“Catch Your Mind” explores emotional conflict, trust and betrayal between a teenage boy and his mom. According to Alan Ostrow and Cathy Beck, high school robotics mentors who helped out with the film, the role robotics plays in the plot is anything but fictional.
Robots lined up for “action”“We’ve had a lot of kids come in, confused about where they are in life,” Ostrow said. “More than [robotics] itself, they find a place where they belong.”
This movie depicts that very world, in which a teenager finally feels at home in a place where his family, friends and mentors are his biggest supporters, and anything is possible because science and technology are celebrated.

About Swamy Kandan, Writer/Director

To maintain accuracy in the film, Kandan recruited high school robotics teams and their mentors as technical advisors. He also brought in a NASA Goddard Space Flight Center contractor and robotics field supervisor who supplied a robotics field. Real life robotics enthusiasts offered their expertise and their machines to create a competition atmosphere for filming in the Philadelphia suburbs.

Swamy Kandan is an independent filmmaker living in Blue Bell, Pa. He holds masters degrees in electronics and management and learned filmmaking at New York University. “Catch Your Mind,” Kandan’s first feature film as writer, director and producer, was inspired by his teenage son’s involvement in competitive high school robotics. This film is produced by Blossom Pictures LLC, a Philadelphia-based company that produces and distributes independent films for the international market.

For distribution information or to schedule an interview, e-mail info@sddigitalcreation.com or visit www.catchyourmind.com.

Know our people - Krishna Bharat

Krishna Bharat is a Principal Scientist at Google who is famous for creating Google News (http://news.google.com/). This service can automatically index about 4500 news websites around the world and provide a summary of the News resources. Officially his title is "Principal Research Scientist".

GVU alumni Bharat received his PhD in 1996 on Human Computer Interaction under Scott Hudson. During his Phd work at Tech he also worked on a newspaper project called Krakatoa Chronicle. This was to lay the ground work for his later innovations at Google. The Krakatoa Chronicle was an interactive, personalized newspaper implemented completely in Java, which was in its infancy at that time. “In the display of the newspaper I tried hard to make it look like a print newspaper rather than what you’d see online. So we had neatly justified, Times-Roman text in multiple columns and it looked a lot like real newspaper. Additionally it was interactive and you could give feedback. You could say whether you liked an article or not, and the newspaper would learn what your interests were. Over time the selection and ranking of stories would adapt to your taste. This project introduced me to the world of online news and personalization, and also gave me a crash course in information retrieval (the science of search) and personalization,” said Bharat. Google news is the outcome of a project that Dr. Bharat started in late 2001 and for which he has been in a leadership role ever since. The service is a computer compiled news-site where all news that appears on the web is automatically detected, organized by story for easy browsing, ranked by worldwide interest, and indexed so that it can be searched on Google. This allows for users to quickly and efficiently access relevant news as soon as it is posted on the web. “How the product was created is interesting. There was an increase in news reading activity nationwide, and possibly worldwide, soon after the September 11th attacks. I too was one of the many seeking news all over the web. I realized that given how the web was organized it was extremely difficult for readers to get a full understanding of what’s being published on any given topic in the news. Even though all the articles are present on the web, they’re so fresh that they have yet to be linked to from other web sites. I wondered whether it would be useful if someone were to group all articles reporting on a story in real time so that a reader could get to all of them very quickly. “The project seemed compatible with Google’s core mission. Google’s aim is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. I felt that organizing the world’s news output by topic and making it available for readers to search and browse would be a useful thing to do,” said Bharat when asked about the inspiration behind Google news. “Google News now has 41 editions, in 18 languages and users worldwide. The product has a loyal user base, and our users on average read news from multiple newspapers for each story they care about. This I believe makes them better educated than the average newspaper reader. We also have a mobile version for people on the go, as well as a news alerts service to deliver news over email. “We recently integrated news videos hosted on YouTube and added the ability for people mentioned in a news story to contribute their own narrative to the mix. This is a truly innovative idea and permits the actors in the news event to communicate directly with the public,” added Bharat. Video from the Symposium Bharat has also earned a joint patent with Google on the Hilltop algorithm. The algorithm is an essential part of how Google search works.

Know our people - Arogyaswami Paulraj

Prof. Arogyaswami Paulraj was born in Coimbatore, India. He joined the Indian Navy at age 15 through the National Defence Academy, Kharakvalsa and served the Navy for 30 years. He is currently a Professor at the Dept. of Elect. Engineering, Stanford University. Paulraj is the pioneer of a break through wireless technology known as MIMO (multiple input, multiple output) that dramatically increases performance of wireless systems, MIMO is now the core technology in latest WiFi and WIMAX systems.

Paulraj served in India till 1991 where he is known for pioneering the development of military sonars (APSOH0 family. Paulraj also served as the founding director for three major labs in India - CAIR ([Center for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics]), CDAC (Center for Development of Advanced Computing), and CRL (Central Research Labs of Bharat Electronics). He has won over a dozen defense and national awards in India. He is also a fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering.

After joining Stanford University in 1992, he created a new field of smart antennas and MIMO wireless. He has published 2 text books, over 350 research papers and is a co-inventor on 30 US patents. He has won a number of awards including the IEEE Technical Achievement award and is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering.

He founded Iospan Wireless in 1999 to develop MIMO-OFDMA technology and the company was later was acquired by Intel Corp. in 2003. He also co-founded Spectrum Infotech Ltd. in Bangalore which was acquired by L&T in 2006. In 2004 he co-founded Beceem Communications Inc., a company dealing in WIMAX wireless chip technology.

Paulraj sits on several university, company and advisory boards in US and in India. He is married to Nirmala Paulraj, and has two daughters.

The Association of Tamil American Professionals (ATAP)

The Association of Tamil American Professionals (ATAP) is a non-profit organization dedicated to provide our community with the tools and resources for professional growth and development. Our mission is to establish a formal network of Tamil Americans to engage in professional development, emerging opportunities, and social service.
Our community is made up of physicians, engineers, IT specialists, business consultants, entrepreneurs, and more. The collective experience of our community can help guide professionals to prominent educational pathways, career opportunities, and business development across a variety of industries and functions. In addition to aggregating the resources of our community, ATAP will also provide valuable tools which will include, but not limited to:
Speaking engagements, panel discussions, and seminars
Multi-day conferences
Career building/job placement workshops
Database of Tamil American Professionals
White papers and other publications
ATAP wants to create a forum that will stimulate creative thinking, utilize untapped resources, and form new alliances that will lead to business development. Finally, ATAP understands the importance of being involved in our local communities and will provide aid to those that are less fortunate through philanthropic and fund raising activities.
Our team is excited to plan future events and programs, and looks forward to your participation. Please email info@atapnational.org with any questions and join our mailing list to receive information on upcoming events.

http://www.atapnational.org/

Know our people - Rajiv Chandrasekaran

Rajiv Chandrasekaran is an Indian-American journalist. He is currently assistant managing editor for continuous news at The Washington Post, where he has worked since 1994. Originally from the San Francisco Bay area, Chandrasekaran holds a degree in political science from Stanford University, where he was editor-in-chief of The Stanford Daily.

At The Post he has served as bureau chief in Baghdad, Cairo, and Southeast Asia, and as a correspondent covering the war in Afghanistan. In 2004, he was journalist-in-residence at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, and a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

His first book is Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone published in 2006, which won the 2007 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction and is a finalist for the 2006 National Book Awards for non-fiction.

Know our people - Anand Chandrasekaran

A native of India and graduate of Stanford University, Anand has significant marketing and entrepreneurial expertise. He co-founded the Silicon Valley company Aeroprise Inc. in 2001. In 2004, MIT recognized Anand as an innovator and named him to the Global Technovators list of 15 innovators. Anand's entrepreneurial efforts have received coverage in BusinessWeek, Business 2.0, rediff.com and Fortune.

Launched Aeroprise with 6-minute "Superman" demo at DEMOMobile (other products launched in the past include Google, TiVo and the Palmpilot)

Anand's involvement with independent film is somewhat serendipitous - coming from reconnecting with college friend and filmmaker Ray ArtConsidered a pioneer in the convergence of Hollywood and the Internet.

First producer to use a Flash Mob to promote an independent film.hur Wang.

Know our people - Sunkrish Balasubramanian

Sunkrish Bala (born Sunkrish Balasubramanian on May 21, 1984) is an American actor. Bala was born in Bombay, India of Tamil ancestry.He graduated Bellarmine College Preparatory, San Jose in 2002 and from the school of Theater, Film, & Television at UCLA in 2006.Since early 2007, Bala has appeared in a regular role as Eric on ABC's Notes from the Underbelly.

Know our people - Madhu Sudan

Madhu Sudan is an Indian computer scientist, associate professor of computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

Madhu Sudan was born in Madras (Chennai), India. He received his bachelor's degree in computer science from IIT Delhi in 1987 and his doctoral degree in computer science at the University of California, Berkeley in 1992. He was a research staff member at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York from 1992 to 1997.

Madhu Sudan has made important contributions to several areas of theoretical computer science, including probabilistically checkable proofs, non-approximability of optimization problems, and error-correcting codes. His work is characterized by brilliant insights and wide-ranging interests. In mathematics, optimization is the discipline which is concerned with finding the maxima and minima of functions, possibly subject to constraints. ...
He was awarded the Rolf Nevanlinna Prize at the 24th International Congress of Mathematicians in 2002.

Know our people - Srinivasa Varadhan

Sathamangalam Ranga Iyengar Srinivasa Varadhan is an Indian-American probabilist.He was born January 2, 1940 in Madras (Chennai), India. He received his undergraduate degree in 1959 from Presidency College, Madras and his doctorate in 1963 from the Indian Statistical Institute under Calyampudi R. Rao, who arranged for Andrey Kolmogorov to be present at Varadhan's thesis defense. Since 1963, he has worked at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University, where he is currently (as of 2007) a professor.

Varadhan is known for his work with Daniel W. Stroock on diffusion processes, for which he received the Steele Prize from the American Mathematical Society in 1996, and for his work on large deviations with Monroe Donsker, for which he was awarded the Abel Prize on March 22, 2007 by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. Varadhan is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

Know our people - Sendhil Ramamurthy

Sendhil Ramamurthy (born May 17, 1974) is an American actor, born in Chicago, Illinois but raised in San Antonio, Texas. He is perhaps best known for the role he plays as Indian geneticist Mohinder Suresh in the NBC drama Heroes.

He was born in the US to Indian Tamil parents, both of whom are physicians. His parents are from Bangalore, India. He has one sister, who is a physician, doing a residency in a combined internal medicine and psychiatry residency program. He and his sister were raised in San Antonio. In San Antonio, he went to Keystone School and graduated from there in 1991. He is the cousin of film director Jay Chandrasekhar. He is married to actress Olga Sosnovska; they have one daughter, Halina.

Ramamurthy attended Tufts University initially as a pre-med major to follow in his parents' footsteps. He was also a member of the Kappa Charge of Theta Delta Chi. He then became interested in acting when he took an "Intro to Acting" class during his junior year as part of his graduation requirement. After participating in several plays — including Our Country's Good, he chose to change career goals. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in history and then attended the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, from which he graduated in 1999.

Know our people - Ashok Amirtraj

Ashok Amritraj is Chairman and CEO of Hyde Park Entertainment, a Hollywood producer and a former tennis player. His brothers are also tennis players, Vijay Amritraj and Anand Amritraj. Amritraj has produced over 809 films, including, Jeans and hit hollywood films such as Antitrust, Walking Tall, and Bringing Down the House (film), which starred Steve Martin and Queen Latifah. Among his upcoming movies are projects based on Lee Falk's characters Mandrake the Magician.Ashok Amritraj, found love after marrying Chitra in San Thome cathedral in Madras. He has a daughter Priya and a son Milan.

Know Our People - Padma Lakshmi

Lakshmi`s career began at age 20, when she was discovered by a high-profile modeling agent in Spain while sitting in a cafe.[1] As she has stated, “I was the first Indian model to have a career in Paris, Milan and New York. I’m the first one to admit that I was a novelty.

She was born into a South Indian Tamil Brahmin (Iyer) family in 1970 and raised in India and the United States. Her first name means "lotus" in Sanskrit, as well as "pearl" or "jewel." Parvati is a consort of Shiva. Lakshmi is the name of the Hindu goddess of wealth.

Know our people - Ramani Ayer

Ramani Ayer

Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, Chairman of Executive Committee, Chairman of Hartford Fire, Chairman of Hartford Life Inc and Chief Executive Officer of Hartford Fire, Hartford Financial Services Group Inc.

Know Our People - Arvind Raghunathan

Arvind Raghunathan

Arvind Raghunathan is a Managing Director and Head of Global Arbitrage at Deutsche Bank, where he has worked since 1995. In this capacity, he manages a large part of the bank’s proprietary trading and investments in a variety of financial instruments globally.
He was born in India in 1963 and obtained a degree in engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras, in 1984, where he was a National Talent Search scholar. He then moved to the United States and obtained a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley in 1988.
For the next three years, he was an Assistant Professor at the Courant Institute of Mathematics at New York University and the University of California, Davis, where he did fundamental research on computing. During this time, he was also a consultant for a number of corporations, including IBM, Hewlett Packard and Xerox. In 1991, he was elected a Fellow of the Institute for Combinatorics.
Later that year, Mr. Raghunathan joined Credit Suisse First Boston, where he was involved in all aspects of the Equities business. In 1995, he joined Deutsche Bank, where he was a co-founder of a new department called Equity Arbitrage. His group continued to grow and became one of the most successful units within the bank as well as in the industry. He has been named several times as one of the world’s top traders by industry publications.
Mr. Raghunathan is actively involved in a number of non-profit organizations. He is on the board of The Dalton School, where his daughters attend fifth grade. At the Asia Society, Mr. Raghunathan is on the advisory committee of the India Fund, which has sponsored major art and cultural events in the United States, as well as established a center in Mumbai. He is also actively involved in establishing centers for South Asian studies at several universities in the United States. Furthermore, Mr. Raghunathan has led fundraising for Sankara Nethralaya, a charitable hospital that specializes in vision care in India. He has also raised funds for the Democratic Party.
Mr. Raghunathan is married to Sribala (Bonnie) Subramanian, formerly a journalist with Time magazine. Their ten year old twin daughters, Anjali and Lipika, attend fifth grade at the Dalton School.

Subramanyan Chandrasekhar - Autobiography

Subramanyan Chandrasekhar - The Nobel Prize in Physics 1983

Autobiography

I was born in Lahore (then a part of British India) on the 19th of October 1910, as the first son and the third child of a family of four sons and six daughters. My father, Chandrasekhara Subrahmanya Ayyar, an officer in Government Service in the Indian Audits and Accounts Department, was then in Lahore as the Deputy Auditor General of the Northwestern Railways. My mother, Sita (neé Balakrishnan) was a woman of high intellectual attainments (she translated into Tamil, for example, Henrik Ibsen's A Doll House), was passionately devoted to her children, and was intensely ambitious for them.My early education, till I was twelve, was at home by my parents and by private tuition. In 1918, my father was transferred to Madras where the family was permanently established at that time.In Madras, I attended the Hindu High School, Triplicane, during the years 1922-25. My university education (1925-30) was at the Presidency College. I took my bachelor's degree, B.Sc. (Hon.), in physics in June 1930. In July of that year, I was awarded a Government of India scholarship for graduate studies in Cambridge, England. In Cambridge, I became a research student under the supervision of Professor R.H. Fowler (who was also responsible for my admission to Trinity College). On the advice of Professor P.A.M. Dirac, I spent the third of my three undergraduate years at the Institut för Teoretisk Fysik in Copenhagen.I took my Ph.D. degree at Cambridge in the summer of 1933. In the following October, I was elected to a Prize Fellowship at Trinity College for the period 1933-37. During my Fellowship years at Trinity, I formed lasting friendships with several, including Sir Arthur Eddington and Professor E.A. Milne.While on a short visit to Harvard University (in Cambridge, Massachusetts), at the invitation of the then Director, Dr. Harlow Shapley, during the winter months (January-March) of 1936, I was offered a position as a Research Associate at the University of Chicago by Dr. Otto Struve and President Robert Maynard Hutchins. I joined the faculty of the University of Chicago in January 1937. And I have remained at this University ever since.During my last two years (1928-30) at the Presidency College in Madras, I formed a friendship with Lalitha Doraiswamy, one year my junior. This friendship matured; and we were married (in India) in September 1936 prior to my joining the University of Chicago. In the sharing of our lives during the past forty-seven years, Lalitha's patient understanding, support, and encouragement have been the central facts of my life.After the early preparatory years, my scientific work has followed a certain pattern motivated, principally, by a quest after perspectives. In practise, this quest has consisted in my choosing (after some trials and tribulations) a certain area which appears amenable to cultivation and compatible with my taste, abilities, and temperament. And when after some years of study, I feel that I have accumulated a sufficient body of knowledge and achieved a view of my own, I have the urge to present my point of view, ab initio, in a coherent account with order, form, and structure.There have been seven such periods in my life: stellar structure, including the theory of white dwarfs (1929-1939); stellar dynamics, including the theory of Brownian motion (1938-1943); the theory of radiative transfer, including the theory of stellar atmospheres and the quantum theory of the negative ion of hydrogen and the theory of planetary atmospheres, including the theory of the illumination and the polarization of the sunlit sky (1943-1950); hydrodynamic and hydromagnetic stability, including the theory of the Rayleigh-Bernard convection (1952-1961); the equilibrium and the stability of ellipsoidal figures of equilibrium, partly in collaboration with Norman R. Lebovitz (1961-1968); the general theory of relativity and relativistic astrophysics (1962-1971); and the mathematical theory of black holes (1974- 1983). The monographs which resulted from these several periods are:1. An Introduction to the Study of Stellar Structure (1939, University of Chicago Press; reprinted by Dover Publications, Inc., 1967).2a. Principles of Stellar Dynamics (1943, University of Chicago Press; reprinted by Dover Publications, Inc., 1960).2b. 'Stochastic Problems in Physics and Astronomy', Reviews of Modern Physics, 15, 1 - 89 (1943); reprinted in Selected Papers on Noise and Stochastic Processes by Nelson Wax, Dover Publications, Inc., 1954.3. Radiative Transfer (1950, Clarendon Press, Oxford; reprinted by Dover Publications, Inc., 1960).4. Hydrodynamic and Hydromagnetic Stability (1961, Clarendon Press, Oxford; reprinted by Dover Publications, Inc., 1981).5. Ellipsoidal Figures of Equilibrium (1968; Yale University Press).6. The Mathematical Theory of Black Holes (1983, Clarendon Press, Oxford).However, the work which appears to be singled out in the citation for the award of the Nobel Prize is included in the following papers:'The highly collapsed configurations of a stellar mass', Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., 91, 456-66 (1931).'The maximum mass of ideal white dwarfs', Astrophys. J., 74, 81 - 2 (1931).'The density of white dwarfstars', Phil. Mag., 11, 592 - 96 (1931).'Some remarks on the state of matter in the interior of stars', Z. f. Astrophysik, 5, 321-27 (1932).'The physical state of matter in the interior of stars', Obseroatoy, 57, 93 - 9 (1934)'Stellar configurations with degenerate cores', Observatoy, 57, 373 - 77 (1934).'The highly collapsed configurations of a stellar mass' (second paper), Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., 95, 207 - 25 (1935).'Stellar configurations with degenerate cores', Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., 95, 226-60 (1935).'Stellar configurations with degenerate cores' (second paper), Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., 95, 676 - 93 (1935).'The pressure in the interior of a star', Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., 96, 644 - 47 (1936).'On the maximum possible central radiation pressure in a star of a given mass', Observatoy, 59, 47 - 8 (1936).'Dynamical instability of gaseous masses approaching the Schwarzschild limit in general relativity', Phys. Rev. Lett., 12, 114 - 16 (1964); Erratum, Phys. Rev. Lett., 12, 437 - 38 (1964).'The dynamical instability of the white-dwarf configurations approaching the limiting mass' (with Robert F. Tooper), Astrophys. J., 139, 1396 - 98 (1964).'The dynamical instability of gaseous masses approaching the Schwarzschild limit in general relativity', Astrophys. J., 140, 417 - 33 (1964).'Solutions of two problems in the theory of gravitational radiation', Phys. Rev. Lett., 24, 611 - 15 (1970); Erratum, Phys. Rev. Lett., 24, 762 (1970).'The effect of graviational radiation on the secular stability of the Maclaurin spheroid', Astrophys. J., 161, 561 - 69 (1970).
From Les Prix Nobel. The Nobel Prizes 1983, Editor Wilhelm Odelberg, [Nobel Foundation], Stockholm, 1984
This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and later published in the book series Les Prix Nobel/Nobel Lectures. The information is sometimes updated with an addendum submitted by the Laureate. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.

Subramanyan Chandrasekhar died on August 21, 1995.
Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1983

SOURCE : http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1983/chandrasekhar-autobio.html

know our people - Indra Krishnamurthy Nooyi

Indra Krishnamurthy Nooyi (born October 28, 1955 in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India) is the chairwoman and chief executive officer of PepsiCo, the world's fourth-largest food and beverage company. According to the polls Forbes magazine conducted, Nooyi ranks fifth on the 2007 list of The World's 100 Most Powerful Women. Nooyi has been named the #1 Most Powerful Business Woman in the world in 2006 and 2007 by Fortune magazine

Know our people - Jay Chandrasekhar

Jayanth Jambulingam Chandrasekhar (born April 9, 1968) is an American actor, comedian, writer, and film director with the comedy team Broken Lizard.

Chandrasekhar was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of physicians, who both have Tamil Indian heritage originating from Tamil Nadu.He attended high school at Lake Forest Academy. He graduated from Colgate University, where he was a part of the comedy troupe Charred Goosebeak with the other Lizards and a member of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity.Chandrasekhar is best known for directing the film version of The Dukes of Hazzard, as well as the troupe's own films, Super Troopers, Club Dread, and Beerfest. He also starred as the cab driver in the "Terror Taxi" skit from Jackass: Number Two.

Know our people - Sanjay Raman

Sanjay Raman, Co-Founder & Vice President of Product Development http://www.howcast.com/
Prior to co-founding Howcast, Sanjay worked at Google as a Product Manager for Google Apps, driving product vision for Google's suite of communication and collaboration products. As one of the initial members of the Google Video Team, Sanjay helped launch the first user-generated video upload platform. Earlier in his career, Sanjay spent two years at Morgan Stanley as an analyst. While earning his bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science at MIT, Sanjay co-founded and served as chief architect of an enterprise wireless software company that was acquired in 2001.