Indian origin researchers among top 100 scientists

Seven scientists of Indian origin, including Srinidhi Varadarajan who built a super computer from off-the-shelf commercial products, were named among the world's top 100 young researchers by Technology Review published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The top 100 honour, an annual event by the prestigious institute, recognises exceptional talent in fields like biotechnology, medicine, nanotechnology and computing.

Besides Varadarajan, the other young Indian origin researchers selected were Anuj Batra, Ramesh Raskar, Chaitali Sengupta, Ravi Kane, Vikram Sheel Kumar and Ananth Natarajan.

Varadarajan, Director, Terascale Computing Facility, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, conceived and built the world's third-fastest supercomputer from a cluster of 1,100 Apple Macintoshes. The project cost around $ 5 million when world-class supercomputers cost $ 100 million or more.

Batra, 34, is a systems engineer at Texas Instruments.

He leads one of the industry's top teams advancing ultra wideband wireless technology, which provides the high speeds needed for streaming-media applications with low power consumption.

Raskar, 34, a visiting research scientist at Mitsubishi Electric, was named for building large computer display systems that seamlessly combine images from multiple projectors.

The computer scientist's image-processing and graphics research may lead to new applications in entertainment, image-guided surgery and user interfaces.

Chaitali Sengupta, 34, who finds mention in the list, is a systems architect with Texas Instruments which oversees the architecture of the communication chips. These chips are useful in multimedia cell phones which handle Internet access, video conferencing and mobile commerce.

Ravi Kane, 32, assistant professor, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, was selected for creating a highly potent anthrax treatment in which each drug molecule blocks multiple toxin molecules rather than just one. He is now extending the concept to anti-HIV therapies.

Another young researcher, Vikram Sheel Kumar, 28, co-founder and CEO, Dimagi, founded his company in Boston to develop interactive software that motivates patients to manage chronic diseases such as diabetes and AIDS.

Ananth Natarajan, 33, CEO, Infinite Biomedical Technologies, was named for devising technology that enables implantable cardiac devices to detect incipient heart attacks.