Biographies

Mr. Dimon became Chairman of the Board, effective January 1, 2007, following his appointment as CEO on January 1, 2006. He also assumed the title of President upon the company’s merger with Bank One Corporation on July 1, 2004.

Mr. Dimon began his professional career at American Express Company, serving as Assistant to the President from 1982 until 1985. He then became a key member of the team that launched and defined the strategy for Commercial Credit Company in October 1986, when the consumer lending company was spun off from Control Data Corporation. He served as Chief Financial Officer and an Executive Vice President, and then President. A completely restructured Commercial Credit made numerous acquisitions and divestitures, substantially improving its profitability. Most significantly, in 1987, it acquired and changed its name to Primerica Corporation, which in 1993 acquired The Travelers Corporation and was renamed Travelers Group.

At Travelers, Mr. Dimon was President and Chief Operating Officer for seven years. He was named Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of its Smith Barney Inc. subsidiary in January 1996, having previously been the firm’s Chief Operating and Chief Administrative Officer. In November 1997, with the merger of Smith Barney and Salomon Brothers, he became Co-Chairman and Co-CEO of the combined firm. In 1998, he was named President of Citigroup Inc., the global financial services company formed by the combination of Travelers Group and Citicorp in 1998. In addition, he served as Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer of Salomon Smith Barney Holdings Inc., the investment banking and securities brokerage subsidiary.

In 2000 Mr. Dimon was named Chairman and CEO of Bank One. During his four years with the company, he engineered a dramatic turnaround – taking the bank from a half-billion-dollar loss in 2000 to record earnings of $3.5 billion in 2003.

A summa cum laude graduate of Tufts University, Mr. Dimon holds an MBA degree from the Harvard University Graduate School of Business, where he was a Baker Scholar. He serves on the boards of directors of a number of non-profit institutions, including the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Harvard Business School and the United Negro College Fund.

Mr. Dimon and his wife, Judy, have three daughters.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. is a leading global financial services firm with assets of $1.6 trillion and operations in more than 60 countries. The firm is a leader in investment banking, financial services for consumers, small businesses and commercial banking, financial transaction processing, asset and wealth management, and private equity. A component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, JPMorgan Chase serves millions of consumers in the United States and many of the world’s most prominent corporate, institutional and government clients under its JPMorgan and Chase brands. Information about the firm is available at www.jpmorganchase.com.

Frank G. Wisner is vice chairman, external affairs of American International Group, Inc. (AIG).  Prior to joining AIG, he was the U.S. Ambassador to India from July 1994 through July 1997.  He retired from the U.S. Government with the rank of Career Ambassador, the highest grade in the Foreign Service.

Before New Delhi, India, he served as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy from January 1993 to June 1994.  Prior to that he was Under Secretary of State for International Security Affairs from July 1992 until January 1993.

Mr. Wisner served as U.S. Ambassador to the Philippines from August 1991 until June 1992.  He was Ambassador to Egypt from August 1986 until June 1991, and served as Senior Deputy Assistant Secretary for African Affairs from April 1982 to April 1986; he was Ambassador to Zambia from August 1979 to April 1982.

Frank Wisner was born in New York and graduated from Princeton University with a bachelor  of  arts degree in 1961.  He joined the State Department as a foreign service officer in December 1961.   Mr. Wisner is married to the former Christine de Ganay.  They have four children.

Nandan M. Nilekani is the Co-Chairman of the Board of Directors of Infosys Technologies Limited. From March 2002 to April 2007, he served as Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director and has previously held the posts of President and Chief Operating Officer. He is one of the founders of Infosys and has served as a director on the company’s board since its inception in 1981.

In January 2006, Mr. Nilekani became one of the youngest entrepreneurs to join 20 global leaders on the prestigious World Economic Forum (WEF) Foundation Board. He was listed as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine, 2006.

Mr. Nilekani co-founded India’s National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) as well as the Bangalore Chapter of The IndUS Entrepreneurs (TiE).

Mr. Nilekani is on the Board of Reuters as a non-executive member since January 2007. He is also the Vice-Chairman of The Conference Board, Inc., an international research and business membership organization. He is on the Board of Directors of Peterson Institute for International Economics. He is also a member of the Board of Governors of the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER). He serves as the Co-chairman of the IIT Bombay Heritage Fund and he is also a member of the Board of Governors of IIT Bombay.

Mr. Nilekani is a member of the National Knowledge Commission and also part of the National Advisory Group on e-Governance. He is also a member of the review committee of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission.

Mr. Nilekani has been involved in various initiatives of the central and state governments. He was the Chairman of the Government of India’s IT Task Force for the Power Sector. Mr. Nilekani has also served as a member of the subcommittee of the Securities and Exchange Board of India that dealt with issues related to Insider Trading, and as a member of the Reserve Bank of India’s Advisory Group on corporate governance.

He is the recipient of several awards.  Mr. Nilekani received the Forbes “Businessman of the year” in 2007. He, along with Infosys Chairman Mr. N. R. Narayana Murthy, received the Fortune magazine’s ‘Asia’s Businessmen of the Year 2003’ award. He was named among the ‘World’s most respected business leaders’ in 2002 and 2003, according to a global survey by Financial Times and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Mr. Nilekani was also awarded the Corporate Citizen of the Year Award, at the Asia Business Leader Awards (2004) organized by CNBC. In 2005, Mr. Nilekani was awarded the prestigious Joseph Schumpeter prize for innovative services in field of economy, economic sciences and politics.

In 2006, Mr. Nilekani was conferred the Padma Bhushan, one of the highest civilian honors awarded by the Government of India.

Mr. Nilekani received his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, India in 1978.

Victor Menezes was Senior Vice Chairman of Citigroup Inc., and after a 32-year global career in the company, retired in January 2005.  He is currently a Senior Advisor with New Silk Route Partners LLC, an international private equity firm. Previously, Mr. Menezes served as Chairman and CEO of Citibank and was head of Citigroup’s Emerging Markets business with responsibility for the corporate and consumer businesses and global product responsibility for e-Business and Global Securities Services.  In 1995 he was named Chief Financial Officer of Citicorp and Citibank, and, in 1998 when Citigroup Inc. was formed by the merger of Citicorp and Travelers Group Inc., he became President of Citibank and co-CEO of the Global Corporate & Investment Bank.  Previously, he headed Citibank’s businesses and lived in India, Hong Kong/China, and Europe.

Mr. Menezes Chairs the American India Foundation, is a Vice Chairman of the Asia Society and of Catholic Charities and Chairs the Executive Committee of the Eisenhower Fellowships, and he is a board member of Educational Testing Service.  He is on the advisory boards of IIT, MIT Sloan and INSEAD.

Mr. Menezes received his degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay in 1970 and a Master of Science degree in finance and economics from the Sloan School of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1972.

Prof. Ashok Misra is the Director of Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, a position he took over in May, 2000.

Prof. Misra obtained his B.Tech. degree in Chemical Engineering from IIT Kanpur in 1968, M.S. in Chemical Engineering from Tufts University in 1969 and Ph.D. in Polymer Science & Engineering from University of Massachusetts in 1974. After working in Monsanto for three years he joined IIT Delhi in 1977 where he served as the Head of the Centre for Polymer Science & Engineering and as Dean, Alumni Affairs & International Programmes.

Prof. Misra is the President of the Indian National Academy of Sciences India (NASI), Fellow of the National Academy of Engineering, Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers, Indian Plastics Institute and the Maharashtra Academy of Sciences. He is a Member of the International Academic Advisory Panel, Government of Singapore; International Advisory Board, College of Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA and Member, Independent Scientific Advisory Board of the World Bank for the African Institutes of Science & Technology.

He is on the Board of Reliance Industries Ltd., National Thermal Power Corporation Ltd. and Rashtriya Chemicals & Fertilizers Ltd.

Prof. Misra was awarded Doctor of Science (Honoris Causa) by Thapar University, Patiala in October 2007. He was elected as Visiting Fellow Commoner at Trinity College, University of Cambridge.

He is the recipient of several honours and awards which includes the S.S. Bhatnagar Memorial Award of the Indian Science Congress; Chemtech CEW Award; National Systems Gold Medal of the Systems Society of India; Tufts Engineering Award; Qimpro Platinum Standard Award (Education); Materials Research Society of India Medal, Prof. Santappa Award of the Society of Polymer Science India and Asian Polymer Association (APA) Distinguished Award.
Prof. Misra is on the Board/Council of several national institutions and serves as Member on a number of national committees for research and development programmes.

He has co-authored a book, has 6 patents and has over 150 international publications.

Amar Bhide is Lawrence B. Glaubinger Professor of Business, Columbia University Graduate School of Business. Professor Bhidé has published widely in the area of entrepreneurship, strategy, contracting and firm governance.

Among his eight Harvard Business Review articles are “Efficient Markets, Deficient Governance,” “How Entrepreneurs Craft Strategies That Work,” “Bootstrap Finance: The Art of Start-ups” and “Hustle as Strategy.” He also recently completed a book, The Origin and Evolution of New Businesses, which builds on systematic studies of successful entrepreneurs, cases, teaching notes and his Harvard Business Review articles.

Professor Bhide’s upcoming book is The Venturesome Economy: How Innovation Sustains Prosperity in a More Connected World (Princeton University Press - Autumn 2008). Professor Bhide received his B.Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, and MBA and DBA, from Harvard University.

Kasim Mookhtiar is the Chief Scientific Officer and Business Head, Drug Discovery, at Advinus Therapeutics (A TATA Enterprise), an R&D driven company that is focused on the new drug discovery and development of pharmaceutical and agrochemical products.

Dr. Mookhtiar has spent several years in the pharmaceutical industry and has held key scientific positions in his earlier assignments. Dr. Mookhtiar spent more than a decade at Bristol-Myers Squibb before he joined Ranbaxy Laboratories. He was part of the Metabolic Diseases Drug Discovery group at the Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical research Institute of Princeton, NJ, USA, where he pioneered Diabetes and Obesity programs. Prior to joining Advinus, Dr. Mookhtiar was Vice President, New Drug Discovery Research, at Ranbaxy Laboratories Limited, where he led a team of over 200 scientists from multiple disciplines. He speaks often about how to be a global competitor in drug discovery.

Dr. Mookhtiar, a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, received his PhD from Florida State University, Tallahassee.

Mr. Ramesh Vangal is the Chairman of the Katra Group. The Katra Group was co–founded by Ramesh and Katharin Vangal in 2001. The Katra Group is building a footprint across key platforms through both strategic investments, and owned and operated businesses. Katra’s mission is to be a premier organisation to leverage the India arbitrage - to be the global bridge that delivers the India advantage in both the `from India’, and the `for India’ sectors.

The Katra Group has built a strategic presence across diverse sectors including wellness, technology, infrastructure & marine logistics, agri businesses, leisure and lifestyle products and services. The group is also building a platform in the real estate and financial services sectors. A US$ 500 mn enterprise, the group employs 5,000 people worldwide and supports a network of over 6,000 farmers in India.

Ramesh started his career with Procter & Gamble in Geneva, Switzerland and subsequently completed several operations and marketing assignments in Europe, the Middle East, Central America, the Caribbean and West Africa.

Ramesh was President, Asia Pacific for PepsiCo Foods and also a Member of PepsiCo’s Worldwide Executive Council. He led PepsiCo’s entry into India, an initiative that became the basis of a Harvard Business School case study and led to his being the first recipient of Pepsi-Cola International’s High Performance Leadership Award in 1992.

Ramesh was invited to serve on the Board of Infosys Technologies Ltd as its first independent and overseas Director in 1997.
Prior to founding the Scandent Group, now Cambridge Solutions, Ramesh was the Chairman of Seagram Asia Pacific, (now Pernod Ricard) and part of its global executive board.

Ramesh and his spouse, Katharin founded and support The Asha Foundation (www.ashafoundation.org), which helps physically challenged (brain injured) children and is also building an education initiative for children suffering from autism and cerebral palsy.

Ramesh received his engineering degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai and his MBA from the London Business School and became the first Asian to be awarded the school’s “Alumni of the Year” honor in 1996 and currently serves on the Global Advisory Board of London Business School. Ramesh received the ultimate accolade from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai by being honoured as its Distinguished Alumnus in 2007.

Ramesh is an avid outdoor enthusiast and has a strong interest in wellness, charity and spirituality.

Arjun Divecha is a member of the GMO board and executive committee and is responsible for overseeing the team managing the GMO Emerging Markets Fund, the GMO Emerging Countries Fund and the GMO Emerging Markets Quality Fund.  Mr. Divecha founded the emerging markets practice at GMO and with his team built it to a $25 Billion fund. 

Prior to his affiliation with GMO, a global investment management firm managing more than $150 billion in client assets, he spent 12 years at BARRA directing software development, marketing, client service and emerging markets research and development.

Mr. Divecha holds a Bachelor of Technology in Aeronautical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay and an MBA in Finance from Cornell University.

Shari Berenbach joined Calvert Foundation as Executive Director in 1997. With over 20 years of experience ranging from microcredit to international business, Shari brings leadership and knowledge to the field of social investment. At Calvert Foundation, Shari has developed innovative financial instruments and partnerships critical to creating a level of transparency and discipline that engender consistent performance, investor confidence and broad market participation in the community investment marketplace.

Prior to joining Calvert Foundation, Shari led finance projects for the International Finance Corporation. Shari began her professional career as an Officer of the National Cooperative Bank. She later served as Program Director for the non-governmental organization, Partnership for Productivity International. Shari has also held private-sector positions at Citibank, Salomon Brothers and a start-up international telecommunications company, Radio Movil Digital.  Shari serves on the boards of Community Wealth Ventures, MMA Community Development Investments and the Neighborhood Funders' Group (a foundation affinity group). She has previously served on the boards of the Social Investment Forum (the trade association for socially responsible investment professionals) and the Association of Enterprise Opportunity (a US microcredit trade group).  Shari has an MBA in Finance from Columbia Business School and an MA in Latin American Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles. She received her undergraduate degree in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Prior to joining Acumen Fund, Omer Imtiazuddin worked as a consultant for the International Finance Corporation leading the design of the Global Youth and Informal Enterprise Initiative for the Grassroots Business Initiative group. He also has experience in private equity having worked as an associate at Barnard & Co. LLC, a venture capital fund focusing on the communications, information technology and internet industries. Prior to that, he worked in investment banking at Morgan Stanley. Omer also has an extensive background in micro enterprise and small business development, having worked with ACCION, Women's World Banking, Trickle Up and the Business Outreach Center Network. Omer received his BA from Yale University and an MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Lisa is Vice President of the Global Entrepreneur to Entrepreneur Program at Ashoka, facilitating connections between social and business entrepreneurs around the world. She spent more than a dozen years as a consultant, often developing public-private partnerships. As Executive Director of the New Jersey Governor's Commission on the Preservation and Use of Ellis Island, she developed a restoration and reuse plan for the island. Ms. Nitze also created Prosperity New Jersey, a statewide economic development initiative. As Executive Director of the World Trade Center Baltimore and World Trade Center Institute in Maryland, she attracted foreign investments to the state. She worked as a teacher in Lebanon during its civil war and wrote for a business magazine while living in Thailand. Ms. Nitze is on the board of directors of the American University of Cairo. She holds an M.B.A. from Stanford University and a B.A. from Harvard.

Linda Segre joined Google.org as Managing Director, Operations & Initiatives in September, 2006.  She oversees all aspects of initiative development and implementation, hiring and career development, budgeting and other operational processes and activities for Google.org.  Prior to joining Google.org, Linda spent almost 20 years in the Boston Consulting Group's (BCG) San Francisco office.  With BCG, she was managing partner of the San Francisco office for nearly five years in addition to her client work.  Her client work included consumer goods, retail and small business banking, insurance and credit cards.  In her substantial pro bono work at BCG, Linda focused on education organizations and statewide initiatives.  Linda is the mother of two and a member of Young Presidents' Organization (YPO) and on the board of the Arthritis Foundation of Northern California.

David W. Leebron left the deanship of the Columbia University School of Law to become the seventh president of Rice University on July 1, 2004. Much like Rice’s legendary first president, Edgar Odell Lovett, Leebron brought to the post a powerful international vision and equally strong commitment to the local community. He is currently leading Rice through a period of growth and renewal based on the 10-point Vision for the Second Century he launched during his first three years in office. As he promised in his Oct. 2, 2004 inaugural speech: “Our ambitions shall be unbounded and so, too, our contributions. … Our reach will span from the nanoscale to the cosmos, from our neighborhood to cultures around the globe, from understanding of past civilizations to predicting the future of the universe, from the aesthetic appreciation of the arts to the understanding of the principles of commerce, from the architecture of our cities to the energy of our oceans.”

Under Leebron’s leadership, the Rice campus is undergoing some $850 million in construction projects to add two new residential colleges to house a 30 percent growth in the undergraduate student body, a 10-story research center to deepen Rice’s collaboration with the Texas Medical Center, physics and sociology buildings, and new campus amenities including a library-based pavilion and recreation center. He has emphasized building Rice’s international impact with active outreach to Asia and Latin America and, at the same time, has strengthened the university’s local presence with multiple programs that connect students and faculty with Houston. Leebron has welcomed to Rice the Dalai Lama, former U.S. President Bill Clinton, former Indian President Abdul Kalam, a delegation of Chinese educational leaders on only the third U.S. trip of its kind and hundreds of other global political and academic leaders.

A premier international research university, Rice is home to the James Baker III Institute for Public Policy and highly ranked music, architecture, natural sciences, social sciences, engineering, humanities and business schools.  Its wooded 285-acre campus is located next to the Texas Medical Center, the world’s largest, and near the entertainment and culturally rich assets of Houston, one of few cities with a full menu of ballet, theater, opera and symphony, as well as sports.

A native of Philadelphia, Leebron is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, where he was elected president of the Law Review in his second year. After graduating in 1979, he served as a law clerk for Judge Shirley Hufstedler on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Los Angeles.  He began teaching in 1980 at the UCLA School of Law and at the NYU law school in 1983, where he also served as director of the International Legal Studies Program. In 1989, Leebron joined the faculty of Columbia University School of Law where in 1996 he was appointed dean and the Lucy G. Moses Professor of Law. Leebron also served as a visiting fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and Comparative Law in Hamburg, Germany, and as the Jean Monnet Visiting Professor of Law at Bielefeld University.  Currently part of the political science faculty at Rice, Leebron has authored a textbook on international human rights and published articles on issues of international trade, human rights and corporate finance.

Leebron is a member of the New York state bar, Carter–Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform, Jacobs University Bremen Board of Governors, Harvard Law School Visiting Committee and the boards of directors of the Greater Houston Partnership and IMAX Corp. He also serves on the centennial committee for Tongji University in Shanghai, China. In 2006, Leebron was presented with France’s Commandeur de l’Ordre National du Merite.

Leebron is married to Y. Ping Sun and has two children, Daniel and Merissa.

Vikram Rao recently retired as Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for Halliburton Company where he was responsible for the Company’s technology effort, as well as the setup and management of the intellectual asset management function.

Previously Dr. Rao also held executive management positions in Research and Development, Product Launch, Reservoir Studies, and Sales and Marketing. He joined the Company in 1974 as a Senior Research Engineer.

Dr. Rao serves as a director on the board of Opal Energy, Inc. He is also on the advisory boards of KaDa Research Inc., PointCross Inc. and the University of Houston School of Engineering. Dr. Rao also serves as a representative on the U.S. Department of Energy’s Unconventional Resources Technology Advisory Committee (URTAC).

Dr. Rao holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras, India, along with a master’s degree and a doctorate in engineering from Stanford University. He is the author of more than 40 publications and has been awarded 24 patents.

Robyn Meredith is the author of the New York Times bestseller,  “The Elephant and the Dragon: The Rise of India and China and What it Means for All of Us,” published by W.W. Norton, and she is Senior Editor, Asia for Forbes Magazine, based in Hong Kong. For Forbes, she has written cover stories on General Motors, Kodak, Microsoft, Philips, Toyota, Ratan Tata, Li & Fung,and Infosys. Ms. Meredith joined Forbes as its Detroit Bureau Manager in April, 2000 to write about the auto industry. One of her Forbes articles was included in the 2002 Edition of the book “The Best Business Stories of the Year.”

From January, 1996 until April, 2000, Ms. Meredith was a Detroit correspondent for The New York Times, where she covered the auto industry and other Midwestern news. She spent the 1998-1999 academic year as a Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan Business School.

Ms. Meredith wrote for USA Today as a business reporter in 1995. She spent the previous two years as a reporter in the Washington bureau of the American Banker newspaper, where her reporting exposed a pattern of insider deals at savings and loans that led to four Congressional hearings and an overhaul of U.S. banking regulations governing initial public offerings.

Ms. Meredith received a B.A. degree, cum laude, from Boston University in 1990. For more information about her book, see www.elephantanddragon.com

Avi Nash is a former partner of Goldman Sachs. He now heads a firm that advises global chemical industry leaders on Mergers, Acquisitions and Strategy. Current & past clients of his firm represent over half the chemical industry’s market capitalization in the US & Europe, as well as industry leaders in Asia, Middle East and Latin America.

Prior to his retirement from Goldman Sachs in 2003, he headed the firm’s Chemical Industry Group globally, and the Basic Materials Group in N. America, in the investment research division. He joined Goldman in ’87, was appointed a Vice President in ‘89, a Managing Director in ’96 and elected a Partner of the Firm in ‘98. He built Goldman’s chemical franchise from ground base and led the Chemicals team to a consistent #1 ranking globally. He continued to mentor MD and VP level executives at Goldman subsequent to his retirement.

Over the last 22 years, Avi has played a key role in dozens of global deals in the Chemical, Ag and Ag-biotechnology industries. They involved M&A as well as IPOs & Equity offerings, ranging in size from $100 million over $10 billion. Clients included numerous US companies such as Monsanto, Dow Chemical, DuPont, Lyondell, Rohm and Haas & Celanese, as well as some of the largest industry companies in Europe, India, China, Mexico, and other Emerging countries. He has been an invited speaker at numerous corporate board meetings, and industry gatherings such as the World Economic Forum, NPRA and the American Chemistry Council.

Avi was a senior strategy consultant with Booz, Allen & Hamilton from ‘84 to ’86, focusing on specialty chemicals and advanced materials. Earlier, from ‘77 to ‘84, he served Chicago based UOP Inc. in R&D, plant design & construction, marketing, & strategic planning positions.

Avi serves on the board of Sigma-Aldrich Corporation. He is a Trustee of The Hopkins School in New Haven, CT, and served on the Advisory board of the Center for Talented Youth in Baltimore. He earned a Master of Management degree from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School in ‘81 and a M.S. (ChE) from Syracuse University in ‘77. He was named a “Distinguished Alumnus” by the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, from where he received a B.Tech (ChE) degree in ’75.

Rajat Kumar Gupta is the Senior Partner Emeritus of McKinsey & Company. He joined the Firm's New York Office in 1973, assumed leadership of its Scandinavian Offices in 1981, and Chicago Office in 1989. Mr. Gupta served as the Managing Director Worldwide of McKinsey from 1994 to 2003.

In his 34 year career in consulting, Mr. Gupta has served many leading companies on a broad set of topics related to strategy, organization and operations. He has played a thought leadership role in organizational thinking throughout his career, and led the Organization Practice for the Firm.

Mr. Gupta is very active in many non-profit institutions focused on education, health and development. He served as the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Advisor on UN Reform, is an independent Director of Goldman Sachs, Procter & Gamble, AMR Corporation, Qatar Financial Centre, and is the Chairman of the Board of Genpact and New Silk Route Private Equity. He is also on the Board of Rockefeller Foundation. In addition, Mr. Gupta contributes to the work of a host of organizations including:

Education:
- Chairman of the Board of the Indian School of Business
- Chairman of Pan IIT Alumni Association
- Board of Associates of the Harvard Business School
- Advisory Board, Kellogg School of Management
- Dean’s Advisory Board, School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University
- Yale President’s Council
- Board of Business Higher Education Forum (BHEF)

Health:
- Chairman of the Board of the Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria
- Chairman of the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI)
- Board of Overseers of the Weill Cornell Medical College
- Chairman of the India AIDS Initiative of The Gates Foundation Dean’s
- Council, Harvard School of Public Health
- Board of the International Partnership for Microbicides (IPM)

Development:
- Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
- Co-Chair of the American India Foundation (AIF)
- Board of the India Education Initiative
- Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum
- Board of the Millennium Promise

Mr. Gupta holds a bachelor of technology degree in mechanical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

Farzana is the Business Head for Retail & Consumer Products Group at TCS, a leading global information technology company with over US$6 Billion in revenues. Retail is a key vertical for TCS with leading global retail clients like Best Buy, Home Depot, and Target. Prior to taking on this role, she was based in New York and was part of the e-business vertical at TCS, where she was an instrumental part of a team that helped grow that business from inception to a US$1 billion vertical in a short span of seven years. Farzana began her career with the TATA Group in Mumbai as a management trainee.

In recognition of her leadership at TCS, Farzana was recently nominated to the World Economic Forum as a "Young Global Leader" 2008. The Young Global Leader, recognizes the top 250 young leaders from around the world for their professional accomplishments, their commitment to society and their potential to contribute to shaping the future of the world. She was recently profiled by CNBC-TV 18 in the “Young Turks” series which profiles India’s next generation business leaders. Farzana is also the recipient of the "INDIRA Super Achiever Award 2008" in recognition of her outstanding contribution to her organization.

Farzana is a frequent speaker at business schools around the globe and India on topics covering leadership, building global brands, and innovation. She is passionate about social development in India and works with NGO’s and foundations in order to further the cause.

Shibani Joshi joined FOX Business Network (FBN) in September 2007 as a reporter. FOX Business Network, available on Time Warner Channel 43 in New York.

To her role, Joshi brings experience in investment banking, strategy and business development. Joshi began her career as an investment banking analyst at Morgan Stanley, where she worked on merger, acquisition and corporate finance deals in the real estate sector. Her experience includes working on the first privatization of a REIT, a deal which was awarded Institutional Investor’s deal of the year distinction.

From 2004 to 2006, Joshi held the position of Senior Manager in Strategy and Business Development at Disney/ABC Media Networks where she worked on the launch of ABC News Now and helped develop the firm’s global digital media strategy.

Joshi left the corporate world to pursue journalism as a producer in New York at Reuters Television and TIMES NOW, the joint venture news channel with The Times of India, where she was responsible for producing news packages and interviews broadcast all over India. She has also served as the host of ImaginAsian TV’s The Pulse South Asian variety show and contributed to ABCNews.com and ABC News Now covering technology and business stories.

She began her journalism career as a news production assistant at CNNfn where she contributed to Lou Dobbs Moneyline and CNN Money Morning. Joshi holds an MBA degree from Harvard Business School. She also earned a bachelor’s degree in finance and accounting at the University of Oklahoma. Joshi is a native of Oklahoma City.

Balu, who until recently headed the Houston office of BCG, co-leads BCG’s sustainable development sector. He rejoined BCG in late 2002 as the founding partner of BCG’s Houston office following a stint as a senior officer of El Paso Corporation, a Houston-based energy company. While at El Paso Corp., he held broad leadership responsibilities reporting directly to the President. He has ~16 years of experience with BCG, during which time he has helped energy and other clients address a wide array of strategy, operations, and organizational issues.

Balu has extensive experience helping clients deal with sustainable development issues, particularly those related to climate change and alternate energy strategies. He has worked and has expertise in many facets of this space: ranging from renewables such as wind, solar and biofuels; to regulatory/policy matters; to clean coal power; to emerging technologies such as carbon capture & sequestration (CCS).

Balu’s interest in sustainable development dates back 20+ years to as a researcher in what is now called “next generation” biofuels and as an engineer working on environmental issues.

Balu also has extensive experience in the energy and chemicals industries. His work with BCG’s energy and chemicals clients has covered many facets of those industries (e.g. portfolio and corporate development issues; upstream, midstream and downstream sectors of the global oil & gas value chains; power; petrochemicals, specialty chemicals etc.). He has significant expertise in supply, marketing & trading and risk management.

Prior to joining BCG, he also worked as a chemical engineer at Union Carbide, now a part of the Dow Chemical Company. He holds an MBA with distinction from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. He also holds a MS in chemical engineering from Auburn University (USA) -- where he completed thesis research on biotechnology-based biofuel production from biomass sources – and a BS (India) in chemical engineering.

Ambassador Neelam Deo is the Consul General of India in New York, since October 2005. Mrs. Deo is a career diplomat with the Indian Foreign Service, and has been in the Indian Diplomatic Corps for over three decades.

Mrs. Deo has served as India’s Ambassador in Copenhagen and Abidjan, with concurrent accreditation to Sierra Leone, Niger, and Guinea.

Prior to her assignment in New York, she was a Joint Secretary, in the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi in change of relations with Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and the Maldives.  Mrs. Deo has worked in India’s diplomatic missions in Washington D.C., Bangkok, and Rome.

Mrs. Deo has a Master’s degree from the Delhi School of Economics.

James V. Wertsch is Marshall S. Snow Professor in Arts and Sciences and Professor and Director of the McDonnell International Scholars Academy at Washington University in St. Louis. His research is concerned with language, thought, and culture, with a special focus on collective memory and national identity. Wertsch is the author of over 200 publications appearing in a dozen languages. These include the volumes Voices of the Mind (Harvard University Press, 1991), Mind as Action (Oxford University Press, 1998), and Voices of Collective Remembering (Cambridge University Press, 2002).

After finishing his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1975 Wertsch was a postdoctoral fellow in Moscow at the USSR Academy of Sciences and Moscow State University. Wertsch has held faculty positions at Northwestern University, the University of California, San Diego, Clark University, and Washington University in St. Louis. In addition he has been a visiting professor at the University of Utrecht, Moscow State University, the University of Seville, the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Social Sciences, Bristol University, and the University of Oslo. Wertsch is a guest professor at Tsinghua University, he holds honorary degrees from Linköping University and the University of Oslo, and he is an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Education.

Prof. Vijay Modi is leading The Earth Institute’s efforts on energy, rural infrastructure and development. He is Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Columbia University. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1984.

He is associated closely with the UN Millennium Project (MP) in understanding the role of energy and energy services in reaching the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Currently, he is focused on projects in many Millennium Village sites across sub-Saharan Africa as well as studying water resources in India.

Mr. Bhalla has been with JP Morgan and its heritage banks since 1979 and has spent his entire banking career in Investment Banking and Global Capital Markets with senior assignments in New York, India, Hong Kong, Tokyo and London.

In his current position in New York as Vice Chairman, Investment Banking, Asia Pacific, Mr. Bhalla is actively involved with the firm’s senior client relationships in Asia Pacific and manages the bank’s business with the North American operations of Asia Pacific companies and financial institutions.

Mr. Bhalla is a member of the Board of the U.S.-India Business Council based in Washington D.C. as well as a Board member of the Korea Society in New York.

Born on May 17, 1948, Mr. Bhalla received a B-Tech in civil engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi in 1969 and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh in 1971.

Sanjaya Sood is a unique blend of deep oil industry expertise and information technology knowledge. He has lived, worked and run oilfield businesses in the Americas, Europe, Middle East and Asia.

In his current role, as Vice President with Schlumberger, he leads the company’s global effort in real time enabled solutions. Sanjaya has overall responsibility for strategy, product development, marketing, sales and delivery for the businesses related to this effort. He and his teams are working with customers, partners and product teams to develop and deploy new solutions that drive efficiency through the entire hydrocarbon exploration and production chain.

Sanjaya joined Schlumberger as a field engineer in 1981 and worked for 10 years in different field positions in operations, HR, product development, and management. Later, he served in several senior management positions, including Vice President and General Manager in charge of India and recently as Vice President of Schlumberger Information Solutions.

He was visionary in seeing the emerging role of India and relocated back to India in the mid 90s. As the VP & GM in-charge of Schlumberger India in the late 90s, he was instrumental in starting several business lines that have grown exponentially over the years.

He is on the Board of several start-up companies and is actively involved in giving back to the Houston community through several charitable efforts.

Sanjaya has a Bachelor’s degree with distinction in Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, India.

Pradeep Anand is a Vice President at Preng & Associates (www.preng.com), the leading executive search consultants for the global energy industry. The founder of the firm, David Preng, was recently recognized by BusinessWeek as one of the top fifty headhunters in the world.

Mr. Anand is responsible for searching and recruiting senior executives-Board of Directors, CEOs/Presidents, their direct reports, and other hard to find, critical talent-in the global oil and gas industry.

.After he graduated from IIT Bombay, Mr. Anand got his MBA from the University of Houston and embarked on a career in commercializing new technologies in the recessionary oil and gas industry of the 1980s. After three successful ventures that today have a combined revenue of over $3 Billion, in 1994, he founded Seeta Resources (www.seeta.com), advisors to senior executives of engineering and technology companies in accelerating revenue and margin growth. He has helped 50+ firms across three continents.

He has authored numerous professional articles published in industry journals and magazines.

In 2006, he published a novel, An Indian in Cowboy Country, a story of an IIT Bombay engineer, who overcomes cultural challenges to succeed in Houston's energy industry (www.pradeepanand.com). Mr. Anand is a frequent speaker at corporations, conferences, and high school graduations.

He serves on the boards of Houston Technology Center, Fort Bend Education Foundation and Pratham USA. He is Chairman Emeritus of the IIT Alumni of Greater Houston. In 2001, he received a Distinguished Service Award from IIT Bombay.

He is on the Board of several start-up companies and is actively involved in giving back to the Houston community through several charitable efforts.

 

 Tapan Parikh is an Assistant Professor in the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley. Tapan's research interests include human-computer interaction (HCI), user interfaces for semi-literate users, mobile computing and information systems for microfinance, smallholder agriculture and global health. For the past seven years, Tapan has been designing, developing and deploying information systems in the rural developing world - initially in India, and now also in Latin America and Africa. He holds a Sc.B. degree in Molecular Modeling with Honors from Brown University, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Washington. Tapan was named Technology Review magazine's Humanitarian of the Year in 2007, for his work bringing accessible mobile information services to microfinance groups in rural India.

 

Michelle Dipp is the Senior Director of Corporate Development for Sirtris, a GSK Company where she led the acquisition by GSK. Prior to joining Sirtris, Michelle worked in healthcare private equity at The Wellcome Trust, London. She previously did Post-Doctoral Research in the Department of Pharmacology and the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford.

Michelle has published several papers in peer-reviewed journals in the pulmonary field. Michelle holds an M.D. and a Ph.D. in Pulmonary Physiology from the University of Oxford.

Chris Loose developed SteriCoat’s core technology while earning his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at MIT. He was co-advised by Dr. Bob Langer and Dr. Greg Stephanopoulos. Prior to MIT, Chris worked in Chemical Engineering R&D at Merck Research Labs in New Jersey.

He graduated from Princeton University where he was recognized by the Department of Chemical Engineering as the top undergraduate student and won the School of Engineering’s senior thesis award. Technology Review recently named Chris as one of the "Young Innovators under 35”. Chris was also awarded a Hertz Fellowship, a distinction of being one of the fifteen top graduate students studying in the physical, biological or engineering sciences in the United States.

 

David Berry is a Principal at Flagship Ventures. He joined Flagship in 2005 while completing his M.D. from Harvard Medical School. David was previously awarded a Ph.D. through the MIT Biological Engineering Division, where he studied the biological effects of complex sugars with advisors Professor Ram Sasisekharan and Professor Robert Langer. David also did his undergraduate work at MIT, graduating in 2000 Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi, with a degree in brain and cognitive sciences. He was named as a member of the MIT Corporation - its Board of Trustees - in 2006. David's work has led to 11 peer-reviewed publications, over 20 patents and applications, as well as over twenty-five awards and honors including the prestigious Lemelson-MIT Student Prize in 2005 for invention and innovation. David was also named as the Innovator of the Year by Technology Review in its 2007 list of world's top 35 innovators under the age of 35.

At Flagship, David focuses on investing in and founding early stage life science and cleantech ventures and works closely with portfolio companies BG Medicine, T2 Biosystems, Epitome Biosystems, LS9 and Joule Biotechnologies.

 

Sanjay Swamy is Chief Executive Officer at mChek, responsible for the entire operations of the company and scaling mChek to support customers across the globe.

Prior to mChek, Sanjay was General Manager of Ketera India, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Kleiner Venture backed Ketera Inc., a leading provider of on-demand eProcurement and Spend management solutions. The India operations were setup by Sanjay from scratch and today have a high-end team of about 100+ employees. Prior to joining Ketera, Sanjay also setup and ran India operations for mPortal, a Virginia-based startup in the Wireless Data services arena. In addition, Sanjay has worked for 12 years in Silicon Valley, holding senior marketing and business development positions in the online/mobile content at Portal Software, Xerox PARC and in embedded systems at Integrated Systems (now Wind River).

Sanjay has an MS in Aeronautics from University of Washington, Seattle, a higher studies diploma in Avionics from France’s National Aerospace School (Sup-Aero) and a Bachelor of Engineering from the University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering, Bangalore.

 

Aneesh Chopra is currently Virginia’s Fourth Secretary of Technology serving Governor Tim Kaine. In this capacity, he leads the Commonwealth’s strategy to effectively leverage technology in government reform, promotes Virginia’s innovation agenda, and fosters technology-related economic development with a special emphasis on entrepreneurship.

For the Governor, Secretary Chopra chairs the Solutions Committee of the IT Investment Board, the Effectiveness and Efficiency Committee of the Council on Virginia’s Future, and co-chairs the Healthcare IT Council with Health Secretary Marilyn Tavenner.

Secretary Chopra was awarded the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society’s (HIMSS) 2007 State Leadership Advocacy Award, and was also recently named to Government Technology magazine’s Top 25 in their Doers, Dreamers, and Drivers issue, which recognizes the 25 individuals they believe help set the standard for using technology to improve government.

Prior to joining Governor Kaine’s cabinet, Aneesh served as Managing Director with the Advisory Board Company, a publicly-traded health care think tank serving nearly 2,500 hospitals and health systems. He led the firm’s Financial Leadership Council and the Working Council for Health Plan Executives, as well as assisted the launch of the firm’s first business intelligence software solution, Compass.

Aneesh graduated with a Masters in Public Policy from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government in 1997. He graduated with a B.A. from The Johns Hopkins University in 1994.

 

Harold Freedman, Ph.D., MBA, B.S., is an industrial psychologist, business expert and engineer, who has consulted for numerous Fortune 500 companies in strategic planning and futurism. He has been a strong advocate of promoting integration of the human element with information technology to increase productivity.

Dr. Freedman is currently assisting the President as a Special Envoy to the Asia-Pacific region on a variety of issues, including the economic impact of free trade, globalization and the effects on the U.S. economy of China’s and India’s incredible growth.

Dr. Freedman will discuss these topics, as well as the President’s perspective on the unfolding scene in U.S. politics, which may soon adversely affect information technology companies in general and the U.S. – India nuclear deal in particular.

 

Kristina M. Johnson was appointed provost and senior vice president of academic affairs of The Johns Hopkins University on Sept. 1, 2007. An electrical engineer with 40 patents and co-founder of several start-up companies, she is the university’s 12th provost and the first woman to hold the university's second-ranking position.

Johnson had previously served since 1999 as dean of Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering. Under her leadership, the Pratt School experienced significant growth in both size and quality. Of 50 new faculty members recruited during her tenure, 14 won early career “young investigator” awards. The undergraduate student body grew 20 percent and strong graduate programs doubled in size.

Johnson oversaw planning, funding and construction of the 322,000-square-foot Fitzpatrick Center for Interdisciplinary Engineering, Medicine and Applied Sciences. The school's research expenditures tripled to $60 million and the endowment grew from $20 million to $200 million.

With more than 140 published articles, Johnson is known for pioneering work in the field of "smart pixel arrays," which has applications in displays, pattern recognition and high resolution sensors, including cameras. She holds more than 46 U.S. patents, 129 total U.S. and foreign patents and is a co-founder of several start-up companies.

In 2007, Johnson was elected a fellow of SPIE, an international society of scientists and engineers working in optics and photonics, the science of light. She also is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the Optical Society of America. In 2003, she was inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame. In 2004, she won the Achievement Award of the Society of Women Engineers.

Johnson graduated from Stanford University in 1981 with both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in electrical engineering. She earned her Ph.D. at Stanford in 1984.

She was on the faculty at the University of Colorado, Boulder, from 1985 to 1999, earning a National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award and winning promotion to professor. From 1993 to 1997, she directed an NSF Engineering Research Center for Optoelectronic Computing Systems run jointly by Colorado and Colorado State.

 

 Steve Jacobs is President of RMI, a division of Decision Strategies, Inc. RMI is a market consulting firm that specializes in the worldwide petroleum industry. He founded RMI in 1984, and is recognized as one of the leading oilfield market consultants in the world. He has 30 years of experience in the oil and gas industry.

The RMI Oilfield Breakfast Forum is recognized as one of the largest discussion forums in the petroleum industry in the world.

He is actively involved in a number of industry organizations including the Society of Petroleum Engineers, where he is an Energy Information Ambassador, and serves on a special committee whose charter is to accelerate the rate of acceptance of new technology.

Mr. Jacobs has degrees in both Psychology and Education from Oklahoma State University.

 

Venkatesh (“Venky”) Narayanamurti is Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the John A. and Elizabeth S. Armstrong Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University. He is also a Professor in the Harvard Physics Department. He served as Dean of Physical Sciences at Harvard from 2003-2006. From January 1992 to September 1998 he served as the Richard A. Auhll Professor and Dean of Engineering, as well as Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering, at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He was Vice President of Research and Exploratory Technology at Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM, from May 1987 to January 1992. He joined Bell Laboratories in 1968 and became Director of Solid State Electronics Research in 1981. He has published widely in the areas of low temperature physics, superconductivity, semiconductor electronics and photonics. He is credited with developing the field of phonon optics -- the manipulation of monoenergetic acoustic beams at terahertz frequencies. He is currently very active in the field of semiconductor nanostructures and is the author of more than 200 scientific papers.

Narayanamurti is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences. He is also a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the IEEE, and the Indian Academy of Sciences. Over the years he has served on numerous advisory boards of the federal government, research universities, national laboratories and industry. This service has included Chair of NSF’s Engineering Advisory Board, Chair of the Committee of Visitors of NSF’s Division of Materials Research, Chair of the NRC Panel on the Future of Condensed Matter and Materials Physics, and member of the Governing Board of Brookhaven National Laboratory. He currently serves on the Engineering Dean’s Councils of Cornell and Brown Universities, the Governing Board of the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, Sandia National Laboratories, the Public Policy Committee of the Engineering Dean’s Council, the Committee on International Security and Arms Control (CISAC) of the National Academy of Sciences, and is the Chair of the NSF Panel on Future Light Source Facilities. In addition to his duties as Dean and Professor, Narayanamurti lectures widely on solid state, computer, and communication technologies, and on the management of science, technology and public policy.

 

 As Editor in Chief, Jason Pontin is responsible for the editorial direction of the award-winning magazine, Technology Review and TechnologyReview.com.

Pontin also took on the role of publisher in September 2005, overseeing all aspects of the company’s business, which includes a rapidly expanding website, e-newsletters, international editions, and events such as the annual Emerging Technologies Conference at MIT.

From 1996 to 2002, Pontin was editor of the technology business magazine Red Herring. Most recently, he was Editor in Chief of The Acumen Journal, covering the business, economic, and policy implications of discoveries in biotechnology and the life sciences. Pontin has written for many national and international publications, including "Slipstream," a regular column about new ideas in technology for The New York Times on Sunday, The Economist, The Financial Times, Wired, and The Believer. And he's a frequent guest on television and radio, including ABC News, CNN, and National Public Radio.

 

 Raj Melville has over 25 years of product management, marketing and consulting experience at four start-ups, and several larger organizations. He currently provides marketing and strategy consulting services to emerging social entrepreneurs focused on building bottom of pyramid solutions. Some of his previous responsibilities included managing the overall product strategy and features for nTAG Interactive, a spin off from the MIT Media Lab; marketing and product management direction at mobile software vendor Vaultus; directing product management at Be Free Inc. (now Valueclick) a market leading affiliate marketing e-commerce solution; and managing the launch of two high-end Internet server products at Electronic Book Technologies (later acquired by Inso). His early career included stints at Microsoft Corp., Digital Equipment Corporation, and Booz Allen & Hamilton. Raj has an undergraduate engineering degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, a M.S. and D.Sc. in Engineering from MIT, and a M.S. in Management from the Sloan School at MIT.

 

 David S. Wilkinson is a Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Dean of the Faculty of Engineering at McMaster University. He received his undergraduate degree in Engineering Science from the University of Toronto (1972) and his Ph.D. in Engineering Materials from the University of Cambridge (1978). Following a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Wilkinson joined the faculty of McMaster University as an assistant professor in 1979. He was promoted to full professor in 1988. He has served as department chair from 1987-91 and as acting chair on two occasions since then.

Prof. Wilkinson’s teaching has ranged from Level I to graduate courses. He was instrumental in the development of a new Level 1 Materials course, currently taught to about 1,000 students a year. A two-year development effort culminated in the development of a highly interactive learning environment for this course. Prof. Wilkinson has also written an undergraduate textbook on mass transport, published in 2000 by Cambridge University Press.

Prof. Wilkinson is the author of over 200 scientific publications, specializing in the mechanical behaviour of both metals and ceramics. His current research interests include the effect of thermomechanical processing on the properties of alloys (magnesium, aluminum and high strength steel), the incorporation of damage into models of deformation and ductile fracture and the effect of creep on oxidation rates in TiAl. This work is unified by an interest in the role of microstructural complexity on mechanical behaviour. His research has been strongly supported by industrial partners from the automotive and aerospace industry.

Prof. Wilkinson was the founding Director of the McMaster Centre for Automotive Materials. Prior to becoming Dean he was also the Director of the McMaster Manufacturing Research Institute and co-academic Director of the new Initiative for Automotive Manufacturing Innovation (iAMi). He has held visiting professorships at the Max Planck Intitut für Metallforschung (as a von Humboldt fellow), the University of California Santa Barbara, the Institut National des Sciences Appliqués de Lyon, the Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble (as CNRS fellow) and the University of Tokyo, the latter under the auspices of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (CIM) and a Fellow of the American Ceramic Society. He is a recipient of the Canadian Materials Physics Medal (2004) and the Dofasco Award of the Metallurgical Society of CIM (2004). He is also a recipient of two awards for contributions to the scientific literature - the Best Materials Paper Award of the Metallurgical Society of CIM (1996) and of the Ross Coffin Purdy Award of the American Ceramic Society (2000). Professor Wilkinson was appointed as a CIM Distinguished Lecturer for 2003/2004. He has just been awarded the title of Distinguished University Professor at McMaster University.

 

Rajnesh Domalpalli comes from Hyderabad, the capital of Andhra Pradesh in South India. He was born in Chennai, but spent his childhood in small rural towns associated with dam construction projects where his father worked as a civil engineer for the Andhra government.

After completing his B. Tech in EE from the IIT Mumbai in 1984 and an MS from SUNY, SB in 1986 he worked as a Computer Engineer in California's Silicon Valley before deciding to take up Film at Columbia University in New York and graduating with an MFA in 2006.

"Vanaja" is not only his first Feature but also his Thesis at Columbia. Rajnesh loves writing, and feels that it is the greatest challenge in making a good film. "Vanaja" Won the Best Debut at the 2007 Berlin International Film Festival and was been selected into over 114 Film Festivals in 49 Countries, garnering 24 International Awards and 2 Independent Spirit Nominations.

New York Times called it "Absolutely Timeless," Newsweek called it an "Auspicious Debut," SF Chronicle called it "Sublime Direction.. a Wonder Filled Film," and Roger Ebert placed it in the Top 5 Foreign Films of 2007. The Screenplay has been placed in the Permanent Collection of the MPAA's Margaret Herrick Library.

While at the IIT, Domalpalli had dabbled in penning short stories during his spare time, and one of these, "The Dowry" was eventually picked up and broadcast by BBC's World Service in Sept 1984 and Aug 1989. College was also where he was introduced to South Indian classical music on the veena, before following it up with several years of training in the vocal tradition.

Rajnesh's other passions are photographing with friends in the California Sierras and wildlife. He currently lives in New York and Hyderabad.

 

Dr. Andrew Douglas, currently serves as Vice Dean for Faculty in the Whiting School of Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, where he is also a Professor of Mechanical Engineering with a joint appointment in Biomedical Engineering. After initial training in civil engineering at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, he completed a doctorate in engineering mechanics at Brown University in 1982. Dr. Douglas began his professorial career at Rice University before joining Johns Hopkins in September 1983.

Professor Douglas has done research into the behavior of fast running cracks in ductile steels and in the mechanics of compliant materials, including the mechanics of the left ventricle and the constitutive behavior of soft biological tissues. His current work involved path planning fir needle insertion. Known for his commitment to students, Dr Douglas was awarded the William Huggins Award for excellence in teaching in 1991 and the Dunn Family Award for Service to Undergraduates in May 2001.