Four Indian-Americans selected new members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

By NewsGram Staff Writer

Four Indian-Americans, Sanjeev Arora, Sangeeta N. Bhatia, Ravindran Kannan and Renu Malhotra, have been selected by the renowned American Academy of Arts and Science for its class of 2015.

There are 197 new members in this year's class, which includes names like Pulitzer Prize-winner Holland Cotter, singer-songwriter Judy Collins, Nike co-founder Philip Knight, Nobel Prize winner Brian Kobilka, Tony Award winner Audra McDonald, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and novelist Tom Wolfe.

Sanjeev Arora is a theoretical computer scientist, known for his work on Probabilistically Checkable Proofs (PCP) theorem. He is currently working as the Charles C. Fitzmorris Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University. He received the ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award in 1995 for his doctorate thesis on PCP theorem. In 2001, he was honored with the Godel Prize for the same.

Sangeeta N. Bhatia is a biological engineer and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Based on her investigative research into the application of micro- and nano-technology for tissue repair and regeneration, she was inducted into the class. In the MIT Technology Review, she was among the top 100 innovators in the world under 35 years of age.

Ravindran Kannan works as a principal researcher at Microsoft Research India, where he leads the algorithms research group. He is also the first guest faculty of Computer Science and Automation Department of Indian Institute of Science.

Renu Malhotra is an American physicist known for her work on the orbital resonance between Pluto and Neptune. There's an asteroid, 6698 Malhotra, named after her.

IANS reported Don Randel, the Chairman of the academy's Board of Directors, as saying, "We are honored to elect a new class of extraordinary women and men to join our distinguished membership."

"Each new member is a leader in his or her field and has made a distinct contribution to the nation and the world. We look forward to engaging them in the intellectual life of this vibrant institution," he added.

According to the report, the new class will be inducted at a ceremony on October 10 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.