Democratic party nominee Raj Mukherji, a rising Indian-American figure on the political scene here, has won the State Assembly polls in New Jersey, becoming one of the youngest to be elected to the house.

29-year-old Mukherji, a first-time Democratic nominee for the 33rd Legislative District and former Jersey City Deputy Mayor, had won the primary election in June by a 36-point margin.

According to the Office of County Clerk, Hudson County, Mukherji got 18,586 votes and will represent the Legislative District, which covers Hoboken, Union City, Weehawken and parts of Jersey City.

He is the son of Indian American immigrants and has had a stellar rise in the political arena.

According to information provided by his ‘Raj Mukerji for Assembly’ website, Mukherji supported himself through high school, college and grad school as an emancipated minor when his parents were forced to return to India due to economic constraints.His father Asim Mukherji was an accountant who could not work because of health reasons and could not afford health coverage without employment.

“This experience shaped Raj’s perspective and interest in healthcare and inspired much of his subsequent advocacy in that field,” according to personal information about Mukherji posted the website.

From March 2012 through June 2013, Mukherji served as one of the two Deputy Mayors of Jersey City, New Jersey’s second largest city.

He had also founded an internet consulting and software development company while in middle school, which he later sold to a larger technology company.

Following the September 11 attacks in the city, Mukherji joined the US Marines at age 17, where he served in military intelligence for the Marine Corps Reserve.

At 19, he co-founded a public affairs firm that he grew into the state’s third largest lawyer-lobbying firm while learning the inner workings of the State House.

With clients ranging from social justice causes to higher education institutions to government agencies to Fortune 500 corporations, he advocated to abolish the death penalty in New Jersey and replace it with life imprisonment without parole and lobbied for equality for lesbians, gays and transgender community.
At age 24, Mukherji was appointed the youngest Commissioner and Chairman in the history of the Jersey City Housing Authority – the state’s second largest housing authority – where his work for various reforms at the USD 70 million agency serving over 16,000 residents and over 6,700 households was widely appreciated.

Source: Deccan Herald

US India Political Action Committee (USINPAC) congratulates Latha Mangipudi on winning the special elections for State Representative in Hillsborough District 35 in New Hampshire by a margin of 59%-41%. Her opponent was Republican Peter Silva.
She joins fellow Democrats Daniel Hansberry and Mary Nelson in representing Ward 8, which is Hillsborough County District 35. Nearly 1,500 of Ward 8’s 5,973 registered voters turned out to vote, or just over 20 percent. It was the largest turnout of all nine city wards.
Latha is a first generation immigrant from India, who came to USA with a Master’s degree in Speech Language Pathology and Audiology. Latha used her experiences effectively in serving the community. She also served as a chair of USINPAC New Hampshire chapter and played a key role in motivating and involving the New Hampshire Indian American community to participate in the process of political advocacy. Latha organized several USINPAC events including Presidential and Congressional meetings at her residence.
On her victory, Latha said, “”We ran a great campaign, and I could not have done it without the support of my family, friends, campaign manager and the voters. My goal was to get the voters out to the polls and I am happy to see that there was such a great turnout. I ran for State Representative so I could represent the voice of the people from the community and I am happy that the voters in Ward 8 chose me to represent them. I am thrilled to represent Ward 8 in Concord and I will work hard to make decisions that are best for Nashua and for the state of New Hampshire.”
USINPAC Chairman Sanjay Puri said, “USINPAC is proud of Latha. Her massive victory is a significant boost for the Indian American community, especially in the State of New Hampshire where the number of Indian Americans is much less as compared to states like New York and California. USINPAC has supported her local efforts in past and will continue to do so. We wish her all the best for the journey ahead and hope to see her being sworn in at the State House very soon.”

Astronomers, including an Indian-American, have discovered the most distant spectroscopically confirmed galaxy ever found – one created within 700 million years after the Big Bang.

“It’s exciting to know we’re the first people in the world to see this,” said Vithal Tilvi, a post-doctoral research associate at Texas A&M, a research-intensive flagship university, and co-author of the paper published in the latest edition of the journal Nature.

“It raises interesting questions about the origins and the evolution of the universe,” said Tilvi, born in Goa, India.

He attended Goa University and also worked at the National Institute of Oceanography, Dona Paula, and at the National Antarctic Research Centre, Vasco.

The paper’s lead author is Steven Finkelstein, an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin and 2011 Hubble Fellow.

Light from the galaxy, designated by scientists as z8_GND_5296, took about 13.1 billion years to reach the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope and the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, both of which detected the galaxy in infrared light.

The researchers suspect they may have zeroed in on the era when the universe made its transition from an opaque state in which most of the hydrogen was neutral to a translucent state in which most of the hydrogen is ionised.

Tilvi notes this is one of two major changes in the fundamental essence of the universe since its beginning – the other being a transition from a plasma state to a neutral state. He is leading the effort on a follow-up paper that will use a sophisticated statistical analysis to explore that transition further.

“Everything seems to have changed since then,” Tilvi said. “If it was neutral everywhere today, the night sky that we see wouldn’t be as beautiful. What I’m working on is studying exactly why and exactly where this happened. Was this transition sudden, or was it gradual?”

The Nature paper is the result of raw data gleaned from a powerful Hubble Space Telescope imaging survey of the distant universe called CANDELS, or Cosmic Assembly Near-Infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey.

Using that data, the team was armed with 43 potential distant galaxies and set out to confirm their distances.

Tilvi, Finkelstein and his graduate student, Mimi Song, detected only one galaxy during their two nights of observation at Keck, but it turned out to be the most distant ever confirmed.

Source: Manoramaonline.com

The US Senate has confirmed Indian-American woman administrator Nisha Desai Biswal as the assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia, making her the first person from the community to hold the top diplomatic position.

Biswal, who is currently the assistant administrator for Asia at the US Agency for International Development ( USAID), will replace incumbent Robert Blake to head the key bureau in the state department.

President Barack Obama had nominated her for this top position on July 18.

The Senate foreign relations committee had held her confirmation hearing last month, during which she received bipartisan support and was praised by lawmakers from both the parties.

“I consider you another compelling argument for comprehensive immigration reform,” said Senator John McCain of the Republican Party.

“Despite your misguided political affiliation, I would like to say that you’re a great example to all of us of people who come to this country. I know you were very young … and the opportunities that this country provides,” McCain said in praise of Biswal, who is from the Democratic Party.

McCain who lost out to Obama in the 2008 presidential elections rarely praises someone from the Democratic Party.

From 2005 to 2010, she was the majority clerk for the state department and foreign operations subcommittee on the Committee on appropriations in the US House of Representatives. From 2002 to 2005, she served as the Policy and advocacy director at interaction.

Previously, she served on the professional staff of the US House of Representatives international relations committee from 1999 to 2002.

Daughter of first generation Indian Americans, Biswal draws her inspiration from her parents’ story of journey far from rural India to pursue the American Dream and a better life for their children, which she told lawmakers during the confirmation hearing of her current position on July 21, 2010.

Source: Times of India

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has formally nominated an Indian American Sikh lawyer Gurbir Grewal to be the next Bergen county prosecutor.

If confirmed by the State Senate, Grewal would become the first Indian American prosecutor in New Jersey, as well as the first person of Sikh origin to occupy the office.

Since 2010, Grewal has worked at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Newark as the Deputy Chief of the Economic Crimes Unit and Computer Hacking and IP Crimes Unit.

He previously worked at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of New York as an Assistant U.S. Attorney at the Business and Securities Fraud Unit.

“With his experience as a federal prosecutor in New Jersey and New York, Mr. Grewal has the right credentials and background to be the chief law enforcement officer for Bergen County,” said Christie announcing his intent to nominate Grewal.

“He also brings diversity to a highly diverse county, which will serve him and the community well,” Christie added.

Grewal would replace retiring prosecutor John Molinelli.

Grewal earned his undergraduate degree from Georgetown University, and holds a Juris Doctorate from the Marshall-Wythe School of Law from the College of William & Mary.

He is a past president of the South Asian Bar Association of New York, and a member of the New Jersey Asian Pacific American Lawyers Association.

Source: Business Standard