IndiaPost.com - IISc alumni organizing unique gathering of scientists

India Post News Service

SAN FRANCISCO: A unique gathering of pre-eminent scientists, engineers and executives from India and the US, Nobel Laureates, and industry movers and shakers is about to take place in Silicon Valley on June 22-24. This event is being organized by the Indian Institute of Science Alumni Association of North America (IISc AANA) and details can be found at the website http://conference.iiscaana.org.

Preparations have been underway for a number of months and the enthusiasm and anticipation amongst alumni is building with each passing day for this first ever event of its kind. This conference will be a platform for interactions between the Institute, alumni, industry and academia, in India and the US, to build long term partnerships that will take on the global challenges at hand in the 21st century.

Participants will get to hear a video address by the President of India APJ Abdul Kalam, Nobel Laureate and Venture Capitalist Arno Penzias, Applied Materials' Chairman of the Board James Morgan, CEO of TCS S Ramadorai, Vice Chairman at Cognizant Technology Solutions Lakshmi Narayanan, the Chancellor of the University of Berkeley Prof. Robert Birgeneau, and top officials from IISc itself such as the Director Prof Balaram and many senior faculty members. Having been founded in 1908 by the great industrialist JN Tata, the Institute will be celebrating its 100 years of accomplishments all throughout 2008-09.

The Institute has been the architect of India's scientific and technological enterprise, and its faculty and graduates have led India's National Labs, its Space and Atomic Energy programs, and supported its defense establishment. India's only scientific Nobel Prize was won by Sir CV Raman in 1930, one of the Institute's Directors.

IISc is India's only university that is ranked in top 20 by World Education Report. Today, the Institute continues to fuel the engine that has been pulling the Indian economy on its meteoric rise. While the Institute is held in high esteem by those who needed to know, it has remained relatively unheard-of among the general public in the US, unlike the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) or The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), both of which have acquired a "must-know" stature, especially in Silicon Valley, thanks to the dynamism of IIT alumni and well known Indian entrepreneurs. Even though IISc alumni have been meeting in the San Francisco Bay Area for a number of years, it was only in 2006 that a critical mass of true believers was reached, and since then the momentum has been unstoppable.