Fifteen achievers of Indian origin from various fields of academic interest have been chosen for this year's Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan's Global Indus Technovators Awards.

The institute has chosen a mix of brilliant innovators -- graduate students, young professors, grassroots development workers and even successful entrepreneurs, for this year's honour, an MIT spokesman said.

The award winners in the area of Materials and Devices are Sridhar G Iyengar (AgaMatrix), Sanjay Sarma (Massachusetts Institute of Technology/OatSystems), Akhil Madhani (Walt Disney Imagineering, Research and Development), and Kailas Narendran (Massachusetts Institute of Technology).

Ganesh Venkataraman (Momenta Pharmaceuticals), Sangeeta Hatia (University of California San Diego), Ravi Kamath (Harvard Medical School student/ MGH resident), Vijay Pande (Stanford University) and Vamsi Mootha (Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard) shared the honours in the field of Biotechnology, Healthcare, and Medicine.

The Global Indus Technovators Awards was instituted last year to recognise and felicitate 20 distinguished innovators of Indus origin working in cutting-edge technology.

The awardees in the area of Information Technology are Kumar Sivarajan (Tehas Networks India Ltd), Venu Govindaraju (University at Buffalo/CEDAR), Anand Chandrasekaran (Aeroprise Ilc) and Vijay Manwani (Blade Logic).

In energy related innovation and grassroots development, Sonal Shah (Center for American Progress/IndiCorps) and Sandeep Pandey (Asha for Education) bagged the honours.

The awards will be presented on Wednesday by the Indian Business Club at MIT.

Dr Mootha, who hails from Andhra Pradesh, had recently became only the sixth person of Indian origin to receive the annual MacArthur Fellowship of $500,000, popularly known as the 'Genius Award.'

Owing to MIT's technological vantage point, the awards are designed to leverage the technical expertise of people of South Asian origin, and retain the scientific temper in the coming decades, he said.

Besides identifying potential role models for South Asian youth around the world, the awards also spread awareness and provide a platform for showcasing the talents of young innovators who fall below the age of 40 years.

More than 150 nominations were received for the award from around 15 countries in the four categories.

The nominees were rigorously screened and then judged by an eminent panel of judges, the spokesperson added.