How many great scientists have we stopped from working in the US; because of the outdated views on immigration, by certain sections of our society, and inability of our legislatures, to come together to improve our system? We are allowing some of the brightest thought leaders of tomorow; to not join in our struggle to make the next century, an American century against the surging Asia.
Indian-born Stanford University professor Arogyaswami Joseph Paulraj and Indian techie Himanshu Asnani, pursuing research in mathematics at Stanford, will be honored in Washington DC Thursday by the US-based Marconi Society. Named after Nobel laureate Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937), who invented radio, and this prize is to recognize individuals for “creativity in service to humanity”.
Paulraj, 69, is the winner of the Marconi Prize 2014 for his pioneering work on developing wireless technology to transmit and receive data at high speed.
Born in Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu, about 360 km from Chennai, Paulraj was also honoured with the IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal in 2011, for his profound work on theoretical foundations of MIMO.
“Paulraj is the only India-born scientist to receive both the Marconi Prize and the Bell Medal — the two top global IT technology awards,” IndiaTechOnline.com editor Anand Parthasarathy told IANS in Chennai.
Asnani, 27, was chosen for the Society’s Paul Baran young scholar award for his outstanding work and contribution to point-to-point and multi-terminal channel coding and source coding problems.
“The prestigious awards will be presented to Paulraj and Asnani at our annual event Thursday at the National Academies of Sciences in Washington DC,” Marconi Society chairman David Payne told IANS from the US.
Tech pioneers who created Microsoft, Google, Facebook and so many other companies all acknowledge; that without these immigrants, the US cannot sustain, its eminent position in technology, where it is today. They complain that we have routinely turned away, potentially, thousands of such scientific brains; from our shores in the last decade, at a time we need them the most. They will just do their pioneering research elsewhere; leaving us so much poorer, than where we should have been. President Obama is correct; and I hope that Washington will gather its legaslative strength, to pass immigration reform now!