Another honor for the chairman emeritus of the Tata Group.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: Indian industrial tycoon Rata Tata, the chairman emeritus of the Tata Group, is set to be inducted to into the US National Academy of Engineering (NAE).
The NAE listed Tata as one of nine Indian-origin selectees in the latest round for membership; 69 individuals were chosen in total, increasing the number of US members to 2,250 and the number of international members to 211.
The other eight Indian-Americans chosen by the NAE are (in alphabetical order):
- Anant Agarwal – president of edX, an online learning initiative started at Harvard and MIT.
- Murty Bhavaraju – a senior consultant at PJM Interconnection who has done work on increasing the reliability of large-scale electric power systems.
- Ashok Gadgil – director and senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division, for his work on bringing drinkable water to developing countries.
- Ganesh Kailasam – the Vice-President of Research & Development and the director of Global Research & Development of Dow Chemical Co.’s Performance Materials Division.
- Vijay Kumar – University of Pennsylvania professor in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, whose work has led to advances in the field of robotics.
- Bal Raj Sehgal – professor emeritus at the Royal Institute of Technology (located in Stockholm, Sweden) for his work in nuclear power safety.
- Pradeep Sindhu – Founder, Vice-President, and CFO of Juniper Networks, a California-based IT company, for his work developing technologies for “Internet Protocol routingâ€.
- Krishna “Kris†Singh – President and CEO of Holtec International, for his work in improving power plant efficiency and the storage of nuclear fuel around the world.
The NAE was created in 1964 as a national academy, as part of the National Academy of Sciences. Its members elect new members every year, and they are the only ones allowed to do so. The organization gives out three main prizes annually: the Bernard M. Gordon prize, the Fritz J. & Dolores H. Russ Prize, and the Charles Stark Draper prize, each of which comes with a monetary reward of $500,000.
Tata was also announced as an inductee into the Carnegie Endowment’s Board of Trustees, a think tank consisting of 26 people of world-renowned standing in the fields of business and academia. Existing for over 100 years, the think tank’s members also include Bharti Group Chairman Sunil Mittal, Citigroup General Counsel and Corporate Secretary Rohan Weerasinghe, as well as former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. A full list of members of the Carnegie Endowment’s Board of Trustees can be found here.
Tata is a native of Mumbai. He earned a BS from Cornell University in 1962 in architecture with structural engineering, and in 1975 graduated from the Advanced Management Program at Harvard’s Business School. He began working for the Tata Group upon graduating in 1962. In 1991, he became the chairman of Tata Industries. He retired from executive responsibilities at Tata on his 75th birthday – December 28th, 2012 – but maintains his emeritus standing. Over the years, he has received honorary doctorate degrees from the Asian Institute of Technology (2004), University of Cambridge (2008), IIT Bombay (2008), and IIT Kharagpur (2008).
To contact the author, email to deepakchitnis@americanbazaaronline.com