Ratan Tata elected to National Academy of Engineering, US

Tata Group chairman emeritus Ratan Tata along with eight Indian-Americans has been elected to the prestigious National Academy of Engineering, which is the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer in the United States.

The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in a statement said that Ratan Tata has been elected as one of the 11 new foreign members of the academy for his outstanding contributions to industrial development in India and the world.

The top American engineering institute also announced election of 69 new members of which eight are eminent Indian American engineers.

Election to the National Academy of Engineering is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer.

Academy membership honours those who have made outstanding contributions to "engineering research, practice, or education, including, where appropriate, significant contributions to the engineering literature," and to the "pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education."

Anant Agarwal, president of edX (online learning initiative of MIT and Harvard University) and professor electrical engineering and computer science department in Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been elected for his contributions to shared-memory and multicore computer architectures.

While Murty P Bhavaraju, senior consultant at PJM Interconnection, has been elected for probabilistic reliability evaluation tools for large electric power systems; Ashok Gadgil, director and senior scientist (environmental energy technologies division) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, has been elected for engineering solutions to the problems of potable water and energy in underdeveloped nations. Ganesh Kailasam, research and development vice president and global research and development director, performance materials division, Dow Chemical Co, has been elected for development of processes for production of high-performance polymers including polyetherimides.

Vijay Kumar, UPS Foundation Professor, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, University of Pennsylvania, has been elected for his contributions in cooperative robotics, networked vehicles, and unmanned aerial vehicles, and for leadership in robotics research and education.

While Bal Raj Sehgal, emeritus professor of nuclear power safety, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden has been elected for his contributions to predicting accident behavior of nuclear reactor systems; Pradeep Sindhu, vice chairman, chief technical officer, and founder, Juniper Networks, Sunnyvale, has been elected for his contributions to technology and commercialization of Internet Protocol routing.

Krishna Singh, president and chief executive officer, Holtec International, Marlton, has been elected to the NAE for engineering and business leadership for increased power plant efficiency and improved safety of spent nuclear fuel storage worldwide.