The winners of the awards were announced in San Francisco, California, last month at a function held at the City Hall at the end of the two-day World Technology Summit.
The awards, instituted in 2000, are sponsored by many organizations, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Time magazine, CNN, Microsoft and Fortune magazine.
They honor individuals and corporations from 20 technology-related sectors selected by their peers as innovators who perform work of the greatest likely long-term significance. Award categories include biotechnology, space, energy, environment, education and policy.
Previous award winners in different categories include Craig Venter, the leader of the private project to sequence the human genome, Tim Berners-Lee, whose work was central to the creation of the World Wide Web, and Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux computer operating system.
Guha, president of United Solar Ovonic, a wholly owned subsidiary of Energy Conversion Devices, Inc, is no stranger for such awards; recently, he won the US Department of Energy's Bright Light Award.
He said that while the award was gratifying, but he was particularly happy at the encouragement colleagues were giving him to continue doing cutting-edge research with social value.
James P Clark, founder and chairman of the World Technology Network, added: 'The World Technology Awards program was created to recognize truly extraordinary innovation on a global scale, the sort of work that could be described as creating our collective future and changing our world.'
'Dr Guha's contribution in the field of photovoltaic energy [involving the conversion of light into electricity, as in solar cells] has been outstanding, and the award is just acknowledgement of that fact,' he said.
Guha told rediff-India Abroad that this was a major shot in the arm for the popularity of photovoltaic energy,
He said, "The market is expanding at a rapid rate because of our recognition of pollution cause by the burning of fossil fuels. There are two billion people in the world without access to the electrical grid, and availability of distributed power in the form of solar panels would have a dramatic effect on the quality of their lives."
Guha said the award inspired him to do more research to reduce the cost of solar panels so that people in developing countries, who needed it the most, could afford them.
Guha, considered a leading authority in the area of solar energy, obtained his PhD from the University of Calcutta and did his postdoctoral work at the University of Sheffield in UK, Before coming to the US in 1982, he headed a research group at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, where he discovered a new method of obtaining high-quality amorphous silicon alloy the material of choice for low-cost solar panels.
His group at United Solar has been a world leader in this technology, which is now used all over the world. The firm now holds all the world records for high efficiency amorphous silicon solar panels.
Under his leadership, the shipment of solar panels from his company has grown 100 percent annually for the last two years, and his company, has recently announced further expansion of its production capacity at an investment of $70 million.
Besides this award and the DOE's Bright Light Award that honored the best scientific and technological accomplishments carried out under the sponsorship of DOE in the twentieth century Guha has also, over the years, received the Best Innovation Award in Environment from Discover magazine, and the Best of What's New Grand Award from Popular Science magazine.
Guha lives in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, with his wife Jayshree, who is involved in various volunteer activities. He has one son, Aveek, who has earned an MBA from the University of Michigan, and who now lives and works in Chicago.
