Dr. Meera Chandrasekhar is one of three preeminent scholar/teachers from U.S. universities who have been selected as finalists for Baylor University’s 2014 Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teaching.

The Cherry Award is the only national teaching award with the single largest monetary reward of $250,000 presented by a college or university to an individual for exceptional teaching.
As Cherry Award finalists, each professor will receive $15,000, as well as $10,000 for their home departments to foster the development of teaching skills. Each finalist will present a series of lectures at Baylor during fall 2013 and also a Cherry Award lecture on their home campuses during the upcoming academic year.
The winning professor will be announced by Baylor in spring 2014.
Chandrasekhar is a Curator’s Teaching Professor of Physics, University of Missouri. The Indian American earned her B.Sc. degree in physics and mathematics from M.G.M. College, Mysore University in India, in 1968; master’s degrees in physics from the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras, India, in 1970 and Brown University in 1973; and a Ph.D. in physics from Brown University in 1976.
After a post-doctoral fellowship at Max-Planck-Institut in Germany, she joined the University of Missouri faculty in 1978.
Chandrasekhar’s teaching and research has been recognized with many honors, including the 2006 President’s Award for Outstanding Teaching from the University of Missouri, 2004 Curators’ Distinguished Teaching Professorship from the University of Missouri, and the 1999 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring from the National Science Foundation.
She was honored in 2002 with the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Indian Institute of Technology. She received an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship in 1985 and was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1992.
Chandrasekhar’s research interests are in the area of optical spectroscopy of semiconductors, superconductors and conjugated polymers, with an emphasis on high pressure studies.

She has a strong interest in the education of young students, and has developed hands-on physics programs for students in grades 5-12 and summer institutes for K-12 teachers, activities for which she has received several awards.

Source: IndiaWest

US President Barack Obama has appointed an Indian-American Gargee Ghosh to a key administration post.

Ghosh, currently the director of Policy Analysis and Financing at Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has been appointed as member of the President’s Global Development Council.

“I am pleased to announce that these experienced and committed individuals have agreed to join this Administration, and I look forward to working with them in the months and years ahead,” Obama said yesterday as he announced several key administration posts along with Ghosh.

Holding the current position at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, since 2012, Ghosh also held roles in global health and international economics with the Gates Foundation from 2004 to 2009.

Previously, she was a senior expert in the international development practice at McKinsey & Company, and also worked at Google and the Center for Global Development.

She is a member of the advisory board of the University of California San Francisco’s Global Health Group.

Ghosh received a BA from the University of Victoria, an M Sc in Economics from the University of Oxford and an MSc in international relations from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service.

Source: Times of India

Dr. Vivek Murthy has been nominated as Surgeon General of the United States

November 15, 2013; Washington DC: US India Political Action Committee (USINPAC) congratulates Dr. Vivek Murthy on his nomination as surgeon general of the United States. The nomination, if confirmed will make Murthy the country’s 19th surgeon general for an office that was established in 1871. A graduate of Yale University, where Murthy earned a medical degree and an MBA, he will be the youngest surgeon general in US history. He will also be the first surgeon general of Indian origin, recognizing the immense contribution of the Indian-American community to health care in the United States. Murthy co-founded VISIONS Worldwide in 1995, a non-profit organization focused on HIV/AIDS education in India and the United States, where he served as President from 1995 to 2000 and Chairman of the Board from 2000 to 2003.
USINPAC Chairman, Sanjay Puri, congratulated Dr. Vivek Murthy and said, “It is a great honor for the Indian-American community and one of the highest appointments for an Indian-American. As a leader in the medical community, he is extremely well qualified to take on the role, and I am looking forward to his confirmation. I would also like to congratulate President Obama for reaching out to the best and brightest to serve in his administration.”

President Barack Obama plans to nominate Dr. Vivek Hallegere Murthy, the Indian-American head of a doctors group that promotes his signature healthcare law to be the next US surgeon general.

Murthy is a hospitalist at the Brigham and is co-founder and president of Doctors for America, a Washington, DC-based group of 16,000 physicians and medical students that advocates for access to affordable, high quality health care.

If confirmed by the Senate, Murthy will replace Regina Benjamin, who was appointed by Obama in 2009 and left her post last summer. The job focuses heavily on public health issues.

Murthy was appointed to the President’s Advisory Group on Prevention, Health Promotion, and Integrative and Public Health in 2011. The prevention group was created as part of the Affordable Care Act health reform law.

His group, Doctors for America, was originally called Doctors for Obama and helped to campaign for Obama’s election.

Murthy co-founded VISIONS Worldwide in 1995, a non-profit organization focused on HIV/AIDS education in India and the United States, where he served as President from 1995 to 2000 and Chairman of the Board from 2000 to 2003.

Murthy received a BA from Harvard University, an MBA from Yale School of Management, and an MD from Yale School of Medicine.

“I am confident that these outstanding individuals will greatly serve the American people in their new roles and I look forward to working with them in the months and years to come,” Obama said in announcing Murthy’s appointment along with three other key posts.

The announcement came shortly after Obama acknowledging that his administration “fumbled” in the troubled rollout of his healthcare law offered a fix that would allow insurers to keep for another year people on plans that were to be cancelled for not meeting minimum standards under the new law.

In the midst of mounting criticism of the troubled healthcare website, former President Bill Clinton had Tuesday suggested that Obama should make sure Americans can retain their current health insurance plans, even if it means revamping the Affordable Care Act.

“I personally believe, even if it takes a change to the law, the president should honor the commitment the federal government made to those people and let them keep what they’ve got,” Clinton told OZY, a news website.

Source: Business Standard