Posted By: nripadminon: February 12, 2016In: Top NRIPress News

FOUR NRIs inducted and highest honor by National Academy of Engineering

Four NRI Anil K. Jain, Dr Arati Prabhakar, Ganesh Thakur and Dr K.R. Sridhar (Scientists, Engineers and Professors) were selected as members of the NAE, one of the highest honors for American engineers. Membership is awarded to those who have contributed to the field through their research, practice and teaching.
The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is a prestigious organization in the United States which also includes the National Academy of Science (NAS), the National Academy of Medicine and the National Research Council.

NRI Anil K. Jain, Professor of Computer Science & Engineering at Michigan State University:

Anil K. Jain received B.Tech. degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, M.S., Ph.D. degrees from Ohio State University in 1973, and now is a University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at Michigan State University.

Anil writes articles on biometrics and have appeared in IEEE Spectrum, Comm. ACM, IEEE Computer1,2, Proc. IEEE1,2, Encarta, Scholarpedia, PNAS, Scientific American and MIT Technology Review. He was interviewed by CNN, Voice of America, BBC, Bloomberg TV, Science Daily, Phys.org, New Scientist,The Times of India, Economic Times, Popular Science, Nova, Ars Technica andThe New York Times.
Anil has received Guggenheim fellowship, Humboldt Research award, Fulbright fellowship, IEEE Computer Society Technical Achievement award IEEE W and much more.

Patents: In 1999, he has been assigned six U.S. patents on fingerprint recognition (transferred to IBM ) and two Korean patents on surveillance. He has also licensed technologies to Safran Morpho and NEC Corp., world’s leading biometric companies, that deal with law enforcement and homeland security applications,
including (i) TattooID, a system for matching tattoo images (2012), (ii) AltFingID, a system for detecting whether a fingerprint image has been altered (2013), (iii) FaceSketchID, a system for matching facial sketches to mugshot images (2014), and (iv) FaceSearch at Scale (2015).

Anil Jain has been assigned six U.S. patents on fingerprint recognition (transferred to IBM in 1999) and two Korean patents on surveillance. He has also licensed technologies to Safran Morpho and NEC Corp., world’s leading biometric companies, that deal with law enforcement and homeland security applications, including (i) TattooID, a system for matching tattoo images (2012), (ii) AltFingID, a system for detecting whether a fingerprint image has been altered (2013), (iii) FaceSketchID, a system for matching facial sketches to mugshot images (2014), and (iv) FaceSearch at Scale (2015). He has collaborated with a large number of companies on computer vision and biometrics related projects, including Du Pont, Eaton Innovation Center, Ford Research Lab, General Motors Tech Center, Google ATAP, IBM Research (Almaden and Yorktown), Microsoft, NEC Research, Philips Research, Cogent, Lumidigm, Visa, Samsung, and Siemens Research. He was a consultant to India’s Aadhaar program that provides a 12-digit unique ID number to Indian residents based on their fingerprint and iris data.

Author of several books: Introduction to Biometrics (2011), Handbook of Biometrics (2007), Handbook of Multibiometrics (2006), Handbook of Face Recognition (first edition: 2005; second edition 2011), Handbook of Fingerprint Recognition (first edition: 2003, second edition: 2009) (received the PSP award fromthe Association of American Publishers), Markov Random Fields: Theory and Applications (1993), and Algorithms For Clustering Data (1988). ISI has designated him as a highly cited researcher. According to CiteSeer, his book, Algorithms for Clustering Data (Prentice Hall, 1988) is ranked # 79 in the Most Cited Articles in Computer Science (over all times).

Awards: Anil received Guggenheim fellowship, Humboldt Research award, Fulbright fellowship, IEEE Computer Society Technical Achievement award, IEEE W. Wallace McDowell award, IAPR King-Sun Fu Prize, IEEE ICDM Research Contribution Award, IAPR Senior Biometric Investigator Award, and the MSU Withrow Teaching Excellence Award for contributions to pattern recognition and biometrics.

He also received the best paper awards from the IEEE Trans. Neural Networks (1996) and the Pattern Recognition journal (1987, 1991 and 2005). He served as the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Trans. Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (1991-1994). He is a Fellow of the ACM, IEEE, AAAS, IAPR and SPIE. He has been listed among the “18 Indian Minds Who are Doing Cutting Edge Work” in the fields of science and technology, and felicitated with the MSU 2014 Innovator of the Year Award.

• Anil served as a member of the National Academies panels on Information Technology, Whither Biometrics and Improvised Explosive Devices (IED).
• He also served as a member of the Defense Science Board. He was invited to speak on Fingerprint Individuality at the National Academy of Sciences Sackler Forensic Science Colloquium (2005) and on Bridging the gap: From Biometrics to Forensics at The Royal Society meeting on the paradigm shift for UK forensic science (2015).
• He currently serves as a member of the Forensic Science Standards Board (FSSB), co-organizer of program on Forensics (2015-2016) at the Statistical and Mathematical Sciences Institute (SAMSI) and a member of the Latent Fingerprint Working Group of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Anil Jain served as a member of the National Academies panels on Information Technology, Whither Biometrics and Improvised Explosive Devices (IED). He also served as a member of the Defense Science Board. He was invited to speak on Fingerprint Individuality at the National Academy of Sciences Sackler Forensic Science Colloquium (2005) and on Bridging the gap: From Biometrics to Forensics at The Royal Society meeting on the paradigm shift for UK forensic science (2015). He currently serves as a member of the Forensic Science Standards Board (FSSB), co-organizer of program on Forensics (2015-2016) at the Statistical and Mathematical Sciences Institute (SAMSI) and a member of the Latent Fingerprint Working Group of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

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Dr. Arati Prabhakar, Director, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
• Catalyst for innovation
• Help to deploy national security and war fighting systems.

Dr. Prabhakar received her Doctor of Philosophy in applied physics and Master of Science in electrical engineering from the California Institute of Technology. She received her Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering from Texas Tech University. She began her career as a Congressional Fellow at the Office of Technology Assessment.
• In 1986 Prabhakar joined DARPA as a program manager. She initiated and managed programs in advanced semiconductor technology and flexible manufacturing, as well as demonstration projects to insert new semiconductor technologies into military systems. As the founding director of DARPA’s Microelectronics Technology Office, she led a team of program managers whose efforts spanned these areas, as well as optoelectronics, infrared imaging and nanoelectronics.
• In 1993, US President Clinton appointed Dr. Prabhakar director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, where she led the 3,000-person organization in its work with companies across multiple industries.
• In 1997, She became first as chief technology officer and senior vice president at Raychem, and later vice president and then president of Interval Research at Silicon Valley, California
Dr. Prabhakar is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, a Texas Tech Distinguished Engineer, and a Caltech Distinguished Alumna. She served in recent years on the National Academies’ Science Technology and Economic Policy Board, the College of Engineering Advisory Board at the University of California.

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NRI Dr. Ganesh Thakur, MBA, Ph.D. in petroleum
• World-recognized leader in reservoir engineering and management

NRI Dr. Ganesh Thakur received B.S. degree with first rank in petroleum engineering from Indian School of Mines and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in petroleum and natural gas engineering plus an M.A. degree in mathematics from Pennsylvania State University. He earned an executive MBA degree from Houston Baptist University.

• He is an established leader in the interdisciplinary practice of waterflood management
• He has a unique combination of an operational, technical, and managerial skills set. After retirement from Chevron in 2014, he has started a consulting and advising business, based in Houston, Texas.
• He led development of comprehensive technology strategies for a Fortune 500 national oil company (NOC) in South America in order for company to become more efficient and competitive in the marketplace. Technology strategies are currently being adopted across the organization.
• • Developed a program on practical integrated reservoir management and taught it to over 100 senior technical professionals and executives for a $100-billion dollar NOC in Asia.
• He was Vice President & Global Advisor; Chevron Fellow Chevron, April 2005 – June 2014 (9 years 3 months)

He has served as an adjunct professor at USC, University of Texas (Permian Basin), University of Houston, Houston Baptist University, and King Saud University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

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KR Sridhar, Ph.D Co-Founder and CEO of Bloom Energy

• Sridhar led a project that built a Mars oxygen production cell
• Now started working on reversing the process, using oxygen and hydrogen to create power

The Bloom fuel cells are expected to not only increase our efficiency and lessen our environmental impact (approximately 49 percent less CO2 emissions than our first-phase data center), but also boost the performance of our commerce platforms by reducing the risk of outages. In this way, we’re seeing proof that environmental considerations go hand-in-hand with good business strategy. Sridhar spent most of the ’90s developing fuel cells.

• In 2010, Bloom Energy launched a new energy-efficient and environmentally friendly fuel cell known as the Bloom Box. A natural gas and atmospheric oxygen are pumped through a stack of cells, producing electricity, but theoretically any other gaseous fuel could be used.
• The energy is clean and inexpensive, but development and production of this fuel cell required a large initial investment of $100 million. Sridhar was able to obtain funding for the project from investors such as Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and New Enterprise Associates. Kleiner is represented on the Bloom Energy board of directors by John Doerr, an early investor in companies such as Amazon and Google
• In a 2010 segment of 60 Minutes on CBS, Sridhar predicted that a $3000 box could be in every home within the next five to ten years. Companies such as Adobe Systems, Ebay, Google, FedEx, Wal-Mart and Yahoo have already leased larger-sized boxes

Dr. KR Sridhar was Director of the Space Technologies Laboratory (STL) at the University of Arizona where he was also a professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering.
• Under his leadership, STL won several nationally competitive contracts to conduct research and development for Mars exploration and flight experiments to Mars.
• KR has served as an advisor to NASA and has led major consortia of industry, academia, and national labs. His work for the NASA Mars program to convert Martian atmospheric gases to oxygen for propulsion and life support was recognized by Fortune Magazine.
• Sridhar was the director of the Space Technologies Laboratory at the University of Arizona where he was also professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
KR received his bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering with Honors from the University of Madras, India, master’s degree in Nuclear Engineering and Ph.D in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.