YOUNG ASIAN AMERICAN
INNOVATORS
Contribute Advances in Technology

Asian American innovators and inventors, a good number of them below the age of 35, have been recognized for their contributions in the advancement of technologies in the United States.

The recognitions have come from various organizations, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Collegiate Inventors Competition and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, to name a few.

MIT’s Technology Review magazine have been listing annually the leading 100 researchers under the age of 35 whose innovative work in technology has a profound impact on today’s world.

The list called TR100 included a number of Asian Americans. They are:

Mayank Bulsara, 32, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of AmberWave Systems of Salem, NH, was recognized for developing of a new form of silicon that promises to make computer chips 20 per cent faster while lowering power consumption by 30 to 40 per cent. He was also a 2001 Mass High Tech All-Star Awards recipient for his innovative contributions within New England’s technology community. Dr. Bulsara is Indian-American.

Anuj Bastra, 34, an Indian-American working at Texas Instrument, leads one of the industry’s top teams advancing ultra wide band (UWB) wireless technology, which provides the high transmission speeds needed for streaming media applications while consuming very low power. He obtained a BS in electrical engineering from Cornell University, an MS in electrical engineering from Stanford University, and a PhD in electrical engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology.

Aref Chowdhury, a Bangladeshi-American working at Lucent Technologies, was recognized for inventing higher speed transmission of data over very long distances with fiber optic networks. He designed and fabricated nonlinear photonic crystals that could be used to switch data between individual wavelengths of light when routing information optically. He is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin- Madison.

Yi Cui, 28, a Chinese-American assistant professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University, was recognized for his work in nano technology. His research include nanoscale phenomena, nanocrystral and nanowire synthesis and self-assembly, electron transfer and transport in nanomaterials and at the nonointerface, nanoscale electronic and photonic devices, and chemical and biological sensors. Cui has a BS Chemistry from the University of Science and Technology of China, and a PhD in Chemistry from Harvard university.

Kurt Huang is president, cofounder and chief product officer of Bit Pass, a leading Iinternet payments company. He was recognized for his innovations in micropayment technology. He holds an AB in computer science from Harvard College and an MD from Stanford University, where he conducted research in artificial intelligence.

Ravi Kane, 32, an Indian-American associate professor at Renesselaer Polytechnic Institute, was recognized for his innovative work in biotechnology, advanced materials, nanotechnology and polymers. His research group is investigating and solving problems in medicine and biology by the molecular engineering of materials and surfaces. Kane has a BS in chemical engineering from Stanford University, and degrees in MS in chemical engineering practice and PhD in chemical engineering from MIT.

Vikram Sheel Kumar, an Indian American resident physician at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s
Hospital, was honored with the Service of Humanity award for his innovations in electronic health care. He has developed mobile computer systems that help health workers and patients manage chronic diseases such as HIV and diabetes. He completed a joint MIT-Harvard MD/ PhD (Magna Cum Laude) program at the age of 28.

Yueh-Lin (Lynn) Loo, 30, a Chinese-American assistant professor at the University of Texas in Austin, was recognized for her work in nano- and molecular science and technology. She received other honors including The National Science Foundation Early Career Development Award (2004), Beckman Young Investigator Award (2005) and a General Dynamics Endowed Faculty Fellow (2005 to present). She has two BSEs (Materials Science and Engineering and Chemical Engineering) from the University of Pennsylvania, and an MA and a PhD in Chemical Engineering both from Princeton University.

David Liu, 31, a Chinese American professor at Harvard University, was recognized for his invention of a method for creating new chemical compounds for use in therapeutics, detection and other specialty chemical markets. Prof. Liui’s innovation is the basis upon which Ensemble Discovery Corporation is utilizing DNA Programmed Chemistry (DPC), integrated into a nanoscale selection system what combines chemistry, biology and informatics to discover new compounds to generate new products that address significant unmet needs in today’s specialty chemical market

Ananth Natarajan, 33, CEO of Infinite Biomedical Technologies of Baltimore, was honored for pioneering advanced cardiac, gynecologic and neurocritical care devices. One of the technologies he developed will enable implantable cardiac devises to detect incipient heart attacks. He wants to bridge the gap between research and patient care. Ramesh Raskar, 34, an Indian American, is a research scientist at Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs in Cambridge, MA. He was honored in the TR100 for building large computer display systems that combine images from multiple projectors that will lead to new applications in entertainment, image guided surgery and user interfaces. He earned his PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Sokwoo Rhee, 34, a Korean-American, is cofounder and chief technology officer of Millennial Net, Inc., of Burlington, MA. He was honored for developing the breakthrough design for ultra-low-power wireless communication circuitry and the power-efficient ad-hoc networking protocol. He is an expert in wireless communication and industrial and biomedical instrumentation. He holds an MS degree and a PhD degree from MIT. He was also named one of 5 innovators of the year 2004 by Red Herrring magazine and a recipient of the Douglas H. Annin Award in 2004.

Chaitali Sengupta, 34, an Indian-American senior member of the technical staff at Texas Instruments, was named to the TR100 list for her innovative contributions to the field of wireless (3G) modem implementation. 3G (3rd generation wireless modems provide the high data rates that are powering cutting edge applications such as video streaming, videoconferencing and mobile internet access. Dr. Sengupta holds a Bachelor of Technology in computer science and engineering from India’s Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, and an MS and a PhD degrees in electrical engineering from Rice University.

Srinidhi Varadarajan, 31, an Indian American assistant professor of computer science at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, VA, was recognized for building System X, the third fastest supercomputer in the world. System X is located at Virginia Tech’s Terascale Computing Facility, of which Dr. Varadarajan is the director. He received his PhD in computer science from the State University of New York in Stony Brook. He was also a CAREER awardee of the National Science foundation.

Smruti Jayant Vidwans, 30, a PhD degree holder from the University of California- San Francisco, placed among the TR100 honorees in the fields of biotechnology and medicine. She was recognized for her work in developing a suite of assays that will be used to screen for small molecules that exhibit efficacy against tuberculosis (TB) pathology-linked activity towards the ultimate goal of developing a cure for TB. Dr. Vidwans’ solution points to new drugs that do not kill the TB bacteria but block the proteins that allow them to reproduce in human beings. She is establishing Phenotypica, a company that would develop such drugs.

Lei Wang, a Chinese American and postdoctoral researcher at the University of California San Diego, was honored for his unique study of life’s origins that sets the stage for highly specific genetic engineering, thus opening new research horizons. He developed a method for inserting an extra amino acid into a protein in live cells, resulting in producing a living means for studying the evolution of genetic code and paves the way for probing life processes. Dr. Wang has also won several prizes for his study, including the Young Scientist Prize from Anersham Biosciences and the journal Science, the $50,000 grand prize in the National Inventors Hall of Fame’s Collegiate Inventors Competition, and a Merck Fellowship from the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation.

Min Wu, 29, a Chinese American who is an associate professor in the Electrical & Computer Engineering Department of the University of Maryland in College Park, was recognized for her novel solutions to multimedia security and content protection problems such as fraud prevention of binary documents and forensic tracking of classified multimedia content. She holds degrees in BSE Automation and BA Economics from Tsinghua University in the People Republic of China, MA and PhD in Electrical Engeneering from Princeton University.

Shu Yang, 30, a Chinese American and a Skirkanich assistant professor in Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, was recognized for her outstanding research in polymer science and engineering. She holds a BS degree from Fudan University in China and a PhD in Chemistry and Chemical Biology from Cornell University.

Xiaowei Zhuang, 32, is an associate professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and also of Physics at Harvard University. She was honoring for developing optical imaging techniques to monitor, in real time, the behavior of individual biological molecules and complexes in vitro and in live cells. She takes movies of single molecules in action to show important biological processes, such as those by which viruses inject their genome into healthy cells to cause infection The Collegiate Inventors Competition (CIC) for 15 years has recognized and encouraged college, university and graduate students on their quest to change the world around them. This year the Competition offers over $75,000 in prizes to student innovators. CIC has awarded numerous Asian Americans since 2001. Some of the awardees are as follows:

Ozgur Sahin of Stanford University for his invention of harmonic cantilevers for nanoscale sensing. He developed an improved type of atomic force microscope (AFM) which is capable of taking pictures of individual atoms. The AFM is lused by a wide range of researchers, from people designing cutting-edge computer chips to biologists trying the learn the inner workings of cells.

Jwa-Min Nam, in collaboration with Colby Shad Thaxton, of Northwestern University, for the invention of the bio-bar code amplified detection systems. Nam is a chemist and Thaxton is a physician. Their invention is used to find miniscule amounts of microscopic biological materials. The invention is much more sensitive and precise than previous types of tests that it could be used to detect chemical signs of Alzheimer’s disease or types of cancer far earlier than conventional tests.

Wei Gu of the University of Michigan for his invention of computerized microfluidic control for cell biology using Braille display. The invention rely on microscopic control of liquid flows from medical purposes to chemical analysis. He has created a machine that acts as a miniature plumbing systen, complete with microscopic pumps, valves, pipes and mixing chambers. This machine could become a powerful diagnostic tool for doctors, or allow patients to monitor their health more precisely than is possible today.

Rongchao Jin and Yunwei Cao, in collaboration with Gabriella Metreaux, of Northwestern University for their invention of Light-induced Synthesis of Silver Nanoprisms. The three young innovators’ invention consisted of amending the size and structure of tiny particles with light and thereby create a product with intense optical properties that could be used for biological labeling, making of inks, specialized films, and cosmetics, to mention a few applications.

Collette Shen of Harvard University for her invention of a novel method to produce insulin-secreting cells. Her method consist of creating a way for stem cells to release insulin in a completely synthetic environment and then be transplanted into the body to provide a permanent source of insulin. Her target are patients with type 1 diabetes who must receive insulin everyday because their pancreas fails to produce it. 2002 CIC awardees included Yu Huang of Harvard University for her invention of nanocircuits, and Lei Wang of the University of California at Berkeley for his invention of genetically encoded novel amino acids.

Asian American awardee for 2001 was Xiangfeng Duan of Harvard University for the invention of nanoscale electronics and optoelectronics from nanowire building blocks.

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