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Four Indian Americans Among 139 Padma Awardees Recognized for Their Extraordinary Contributions

Four Indian Americans Among 139 Padma Awardees Recognized for Their Extraordinary Contributions

  • Vinod Dham was awarded the Padma Bhushan and the Padma Shri awards were given to Nitin Nohria, Sethuraman Panchanathan amd Ajay V. Bhatt.

Four Indian Americans are among recipients of this year’s Padma Awards, India’s second-highest civilian honors, announced on the eve of the 76th Republic Day by the government in honor of individuals who have made extraordinary contributions and have made India proud. Vinod Dham, widely recognized as the “Father of the Pentium Processor,” was awarded the Padma Bhushan, India’s third-highest civilian award. The Padma Shri awards, which recognize distinguished service in a variety of fields were given to former Harvard Business School dean Nitin Nohria; Sethuraman Panchanathan, director of the U.S. National Science Foundation; and computer architect Ajay V. Bhatt. 

Vinod Dham has made significant contributions to the world of technology. He earned his Electrical Engineering degree from Delhi College of Engineering in 1971 when he was 21. After finishing his degree, he started working as an engineer at a semiconductor company in Delhi called Continental Devices.  He came to the U.S. in 1975 to get a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Cincinnati. After completing his studies, he joined NCR Corporation in Ohio, where he worked on advanced Non-Volatile Memories. Later, he joined Intel, where he played a significant role in developing the famous Pentium processor. He also helped invent Intel’s first Flash memory technology (ETOX) and eventually became the vice president of the Microprocessor Group at Intel. In 1995, he left Intel and joined a startup called NexGen, which was later bought by AMD. He played a key role in the launch of K6, a powerful processor that competed with Intel’s Pentium. At AMD, he served as the vice president of the Computation Products Group. In1998, he founded Silicon Spice, initially focusing on a VOIP Chip. He then sold the company to Broadcom in 2000. Subsequently, he started an incubator called NewPath Ventures, aiming to utilize India’s emerging chip design talent for R&D, co-founding several companies. In 2015 he co-founded Acadgild, an online education platform, with Krishnan Ganesh and Meena Ganesh. He has also contributed to Teach AIDS, an initiative where researchers from various fields collaborate to develop effective, research-based applications for promoting HIV/AIDS prevention.

Nitin Nohria served as the tenth dean of Harvard Business School from 2010 to 2020 and is currently a professor of Administration. He previously served as co-chair of the Leadership Initiative, Senior Associate Dean of Faculty Development, and Head of the Organizational Behavior unit. Nohria’s intellectual interests center on human motivation, leadership, corporate transformation and accountability, and sustainable economic and human performance. He is co-author or co-editor of 16 books. The most recent, “Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice,” is a compendium dedicated to advancing research on leadership based on a colloquium he organized during HBS’s centennial celebrations. Before joining the Harvard Business School faculty in July 1988, Nohria received his Ph.D. in Management from the Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a B. Tech. in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (which honored him as a Distinguished Alumnus in 2007). He was a visiting faculty member at the London Business School in 1996. He and his wife live in the Boston area and have two daughters.

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Sethuraman Panchanathan is a leader in science, engineering and education with more than three decades of experience. He has a distinguished career in both higher education and government, where he has designed and built knowledge enterprises that advance research innovation, strategic partnerships, entrepreneurship, global development and economic growth. Panchanathan previously served as the executive vice president of the Arizona State University (ASU) Knowledge Enterprise, where he was also chief research and innovation officer. He was also the founder and director of the Center for Cognitive Ubiquitous Computing at ASU. Prior to joining NSF, Panchanathan was appointed by the president to serve on the National Science Board, where he was a chair of the Committee on Strategy and a member of the External Engagement and National Science and Engineering Policy committees. Additionally, he was chair of the Council on Research of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities and co-chair of the Extreme Innovation Taskforce of the Global Federation of Competitiveness Councils. Arizona’s governor appointed him as senior advisor for science and technology in 2018. He was the editor-in-chief of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) MultiMedia magazine He has received numerous awards, including honorary doctorates from prestigious universities, distinguished alumni awards, the Governor’s Innovator of the Year for Academia Award, the Washington Academy of Sciences Distinguished Career Award and the IEEE-USA Public Service Award. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, where he also served as vice president for strategic initiatives. He is also a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Canadian Academy of Engineering, the Association for Computing Machinery, IEEE and the Society of Optical Engineering. He is married to Sarada “Soumya” Panchanathan, an academic pediatrician and informatician who has taught medical students, pediatric residents and informatics fellows. They have two adult children, Amritha and Roshan.

Ajay Bhatt is widely known as the creator of the Universal Serial Bus (USB), and other widely used technologies like Platform Power Management architecture, and various other chipsets. He is a recognized technologist and a thought leader in platform and silicon level architecture in the computer industry for over 38 years. To date, Bhatt has been granted more than 132 U.S. and international patents. He received The Light of India Award in 2012 for his contributions in advancement of science and technology, The Asian Award 2013 for outstanding achievement in Science and technology and EU Inventor award 2013 for his contributions to the development of USB. He completed his Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical) in 1980 from the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, and got his master’s degree from the City College of New York. 

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