A pioneer in WiMAX and a pioneer in optical media manufacture – both Indian-- have been honoured with Padma Awards on India's Republic Day, January 26.
Arogyaswami Paulraj of Stanford University receives the Padma Bhushan. Deepak Puri of the Okhla-headquartered Moser Baer has been honoured with the Padma Shri.
Paulraj is a Professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University since 1993. His group has developed many key fundamentals of a new field called space-timecommunications theory and has helped shape a worldwide research anddevelopment focus on this technology.
He is the author of over 320 research papers and holds thirty US patents in wireless. In 1999, Paulraj founded Iospan Wireless Inc., which pioneered fixed wireless technology and developed chip sets for fixedwireless systems. Iospan was acquired by Intel Corporation in 2002.
In 2004, Paulraj co-founded Beceem Communications, Inc. to developbase band and RF chips sets for WIMAX 802.16e standard. The companyhas emerged as the leading supplier of Mobile WIMAX chip setsworldwide. He is currently CTO at Beceem.
For his work on Mimo, Multiple In Multiple out, the technology for using multiple antennas at transmitter and receiver, he was acclaimed as the “father of WIMAX” by Business Week magazine. A former Indian naval officer, Paulraj led the team at the Naval Laboratory Kochi develop the first Indian military sonar system that was produced by BEL Bangalore. Only weeks ago Paulraj spoke exclusively to IndiaTechOnline on the dawn on WiMAX in India (http://www.indiatechonline.com/paulraj-on-wimax-potential-for-india-177.php )
CD-DVD pioneer An alumnus of St Stephens College Delhi, Deepak Puri holds a masters degree in mechanical engineering from Imperial College London. He has steered Moser Baer since it was founded 20 years ago and seen it become the world’s second largest manufacturer of optical media with a presence in over 80 countries and plants in India and Germany.
In recent years the Moser brand has become a household name in India thanks to the company’s venture into recorded movie entertainment in all Indian languages and and a premier line of international cinema titles. The company has also branched into solar panels and consumer LCD. Our past coverage on MoserBaer:
(http://www.indiatechonline.com/mosr-baer-monitor-12.php )
(http://indiatechonline.com/moser-baer-dvds-17.php )
Jan 26 2010