Indian-American engineer-scientist Dr Sethuraman Panchanathan has been intended to get nominated as Director of the National Science Foundation by the US President Donald Trump, as announced by the White House on Thursday.
The confirmation has to be given by the Senate so that Dr Panchanathan who is a graduate of Indian Institute of Science (1984) and Indian Institute of Technology (1986), can lead the foremost agency of the U.S government which supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering which is bucked by a budget of nearly $8 billion.
Panchanathan was the Founding Director of the Center for Cognitive Ubiquitous Computing at Arizona State University and is currently the University’s Executive Vice President and the Chief Research and Innovation Officer. He is the second Indian-American to head the 70-year-old prestigious foundation after Dr Subra Suresh who was a Chennai-born IIT-ian and was then nominated in 2020 to lead the foundation. Dr Suresh left after three years though the directorship is for a six-year team. He left to head the Carnegie Mellon University before he moved to Singapore as President of the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) last year. The NSF director who is concluding her six-year team currently is Dr. France A. Córdova who is also an Obama appointee.
It is said that, the NSF funds approximately 24% all the research that are conducted by the colleges and universities of the United States and which are federally supported. The NSF acts as a major source of federal backing in various fields like mathematics, computer science, economics and social sciences.
Dr. Panchanathan is a physics undergrad of University of Chennai’s Vivekananda College and is a Fellow of the National Association of Inventors, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Canadian Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the Society of Optical Engineering.
He is a founder of the Center for Cognitive Ubiquitous Computing (CUbiC) which focuses on assisting the individual with disabilities by designing technologies and devices for the same. The lab focuses on individuals with autism, stroke and impaired vision among all the disabilities. The Center for Cognitive Ubiquitous Computing (CUbiC) was founded in 2001 in Arizona.
Trump White House has picked several Indian-Americans considering their merits and qualification for key jobs like the earlier Presidents Obama, Bush and Clinton although there existed displeasure in the navists circles about appointing foreigners in science and technology.
Rita Baranwal, who is the assistant Secretary of Energy (Nuclear Energy), Seema Verma, Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services were among the trump White House’s picks.
