RAJ LOOMBA NAMED TO UK HOUSE OF LORDS

Raj Loomba, Chairman of the Loomba Foundation and GOPIO International Regional Vice President (Europe), has been selected to become a member of the House of Lords in the UK. While Mumbai-born Sir Gulam Noon, a leading entrepreneur popularly known as the 'Curry King', was nominated by the Labour Party, Loomba becomes a Peer on behalf of the Liberal Democrat party. They are among the appointment of 53 new members to the House of Lords.

Widely known today as the pioneer of widows' rights and instigator of International Widows Day, Raj Loomba's campaigning achievements are founded on a successful business career as founder of Rinku Group, the fashion and clothing company of which he is Executive Chairman. Mr. Loomba received CBE - "Commander of the British Empire" award in Her Majesty Queen's Birthday Honours in June 2008. In 2006, the Loomba Trust organized an International Widows Conference at the Foreign Office in London.

The International Widows Conference was chaired by Cherie Booth QC and it received support from the Prince of Wales and Sir Richard Branson as patrons, and heard contributions by Commonwealth Secretary-General Don McKinnon, India's cabinet minister for Women and Child Development Mrs. Renuka Chowdhury, UK cabinet minister and leader of the upper house Baroness Amos, John Lennon's widow Yoko Ono, politician and Aids campaigner Baroness Margaret Jay and representatives of widows organizations from many countries in Africa and Asia. Senator Hillary Clinton addressed the conference via video link and messages of support were received from Conservative Leader David Cameron and Liberal-Democrat Leader Sir Menzies Campbell.

Raj Loomba was born on 13 November 1943 in Dhilwan in the Punjab, India. He was educated at D.A.V. College in Julllandhar (1958-1960) and State University of Iowa, U.S.A. (1960-62). He and his wife Veena have two daughters and one son. They have three granddaughters. Raj Loomba has British nationality. He hold several prominent positions in various organizations such as University of East London, Safer London Foundation and many others. He is the recipient of many prestigious awards such as NRI Institute of India Achievers Award 2008, The Asian Who's Who "The Charity of the Year Award, Pride of India Gold Medal(India) and many others.

RAMI RANGERS'S SUN MARK LTD. RECEIVES QUEEN'S AWARD

Sun Mark Ltd celebrated receiving the Queens Award for Enterprise for consecutive years 2009 & 2010 in style on 20^th November 2010 at the Radisson Hotel, Portman Square, London.

The celebration was attended by many Members from both the Houses of Parliament and European Parliament including Baroness Verma, Baroness Prashar, Lord Popat, Lord Sheikh, Lord Rana, the Rt. Hon Dominic Grieve MP, Attorney General, Mr. Richard Harrington MP, Mr. Bob Blackman MP. Mr. Mike Freer MP, Mr. Stephen Pound MP, HE the High Commissioner of India, Mr. Nalin Surie, the Deputy High Comissioner Mr Rajesh Prasad and Minister Coordination at the High Commission, Mr Asif Ibrahim, Dr Charles Tannock MEP and Mr Syed Kamall MEP all graced the occasion with their presence.

The Queen's Lieutenant, Mr. Robert Leader DL, on behalf of Her Majesty the Queen, presented Dr. Ranger with the two awards and praised him and the company for such a coveted honour, not once but twice in a row. He said that this was indeed a rare achievement as this award represented the "best of Britain" and there were only 21 companies like this in the whole of London.

CYPRESS, CALIFORNIA MAYOR DR. PRAKASH NARAIN INSTALLED

Cypress Mayor Dr. Prakash Narain, Mayor Pro Tem Douglas Bailey, and Councilmember Leroy Mills were installed to serve their second four-year term on the Cypress City Council. An oath ceremony was held at the November 22, 2010 City Council meeting.

The City of Cypress had three open seats for the November 2, 2010 election.  As of the close of the nomination period on August 6, 2010, there were no challengers to the incumbents.  A special meeting was held on August 17, 2010 pursuant to the State Election Code to appoint the incumbents to their second terms.

"I am honored to have the opportunity to serve this wonderful community for a second term," said Mayor Narain.  "We will continue to move Cypress forward in keeping with our tradition as a community of progress," added the Mayor.  Cypress is a southern California city of about 50,000 population, located in Orange County.  

Dr. Prakash Narain was elected to the City Council in 2006, served as Mayor Pro Tem in 2009, and Mayor in 2010. Narain's second and final term ends in 2014.

FOUR INDIAN AMERICANS RECEIVE MARSHALL SCHOLARSHIPS

 
Marshall Aid Commemoration Commission has announced the winners of the 2010 Marshall Scholarships chosen by the eight regional committees. These were confirmed at the meeting of the Ambassador's Advisory Council. Four Indian Americans have been selected to Marshal Scholarship for 2011.

 
The scholarships were founded by an Act of British Parliament in 1953 and commemorate the humane ideals of the European Recovery Programme (Marshall Plan). They are funded by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office and administered by the Marshall Aid Commemoration Commission in the UK (for which the Association of Commonwealth Universities provides the Secretariat). The selection process in the US is managed by the British Council, on behalf of the British Embassy in Washington DC, and the regional Consulates-General in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco.

 
Among the thirty two recipients this year, the following are the Indian American winners, with their current affiliation, the school they plant to join in UK and the field they plan to pursue.

Akash K. Shah (Cliffside Park, NJ) - Harvard Medical School
Comparative Social Policy at University Oxford

Prerna Nadathur- University of Chicago
General Linguistics and Comparative Philology at University of Oxford

Priya M. Suri- University of Minnesota School of Medicine
Medical Anthropology at University of Oxford

Varun S. Sivarum - Stamford School of Engineering
Solar Energy Materials at University of Oxford

SIX INDIAN AMERICANS GET SOROS FELLOWSHIPS

Six Indian Americans are among 31 recipients of the Prestigious Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans this year. The purpose of The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans is to provide opportunities for continuing generations of able and accomplished New Americans to achieve leadership in their chosen fields. The Program is established in recognition of the contributions New Americans have made to American life and in gratitude for the opportunities the United States has afforded the donors and their family. This year's Indian American award recipients are as follows:

Zahir Dossa - Born in Canada to parents of Indian heritage who had settled in, and then fled during the socialist regime from, Tanzania and later moved to Texas. Zahir graduated from MIT, where he and a fellow student founded an organization to distribute low-tech but very inexpensive irrigation pumps to low-income farmers in Sudan.  Their efforts were featured in an article in Popular Mechanics and a report on BBC World Radio.  Their organization has received various awards, including the $10,000 Davis Peace Prize.  He has remained at MIT, where he is now pursuing both a MEng in electrical engineering and a PhD in urban studies.  

Amit Jain - Currently a second-year MD student at Johns Hopkins, Amit under mentorship of an eminent pediatric orthopaedic surgeon at Hopkins is keenly studying implant related fractures and spinal deformities in children. Amit graduated magna cum laude in bioengineering from the University of California at Berkeley in 2008. At Cal, Amit co-invented a novel method of examining tumor behavior in a three dimensional micro-environment and published his award winning work in Biomaterials. Amit was born in Ambala, India and 1999 immigrated to the US in 1999 with his family.

Hari Prabhakar - Born in Dallas, TX to parents who migrated from India, Hari majored in public health studies at The Johns Hopkins University, graduating in 2007 and was selected to be a British Marshall Scholar.  While at Johns Hopkins he became aware of, and committed to alleviating, the grossly inadequate health care provided to indigenous populations in India.  He has conducted extensive health services research in tribal areas of India and has become a leading advocate of efforts to improve access to care for Sickle Cell Disease, a major public health problem internationally, over the past 6 years. To that end, he established the Tribal India Health Foundation and the Sickle Cell Disease Center in South India. Hari received his MScPH from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and an MSc in international health management from the Imperial College in London.  He is now a first-year student at Harvard Medical School.

Deep Shah was born in Atlanta, GA eight years after his parents immigrated to this country from Gujarat in India.  He entered the University of Georgia and won a Truman scholarship and later received a Rhodes scholarship.  He has served as a Legislative Fellow in the US Senate.  Subsequent to beginning his medical studies, he worked as a project manager with the Georgia Governor's Office to design a low-cost private health insurance plan for the working poor.  Deep's research on Parkinson's disease resulted in two jointly-authored publications. At Oxford, he earned a master's degree in comparative social policy with a focus on health care.  He is currently a second year MD candidate in New Pathway at Harvard Medical School and expects to graduate in 2013.

NAMAN SHAH - Born in Charlotte, NC, Naman graduated from the University of North Carolina (UNC) majoring in environmental health in the School of Public Health.  He was a North Carolina Leadership Fellow and an IBM Watson fellow. Naman developed and helped introduce in Cambodia a test that identifies drug resistance in malarial parasites. Following graduation he worked in polio case surveillance and related immunization activities in a rural district in India. His meta-analysis of research on malaria drug resistance provided an evidence base for Indian officials to modify their malaria drug policy. Naman is now a third-year candidate for the MD and PhD degrees in the Medical Scientist Training Program at UNC.  His recent projects include entrepreneurial ventures such as the introduction of a new, low-cost water purifier into emerging rural markets.

Aarti Shahani - Born in Casablanca, Morocco to parents of Indian heritage, Aarti attended University of Chicago, where she was an honors graduate in anthropology in 2002.  While she was growing up, her father and uncle ran afoul of immigration requirements. She spent the better parts of nine years in an effort - eventually successful - to avert her father's deportation. She drew on these experiences with immigration-related bureaucracies and courts systems to establish and lead Families for Freedom, a non-profit which assists families that have members who are under threat of deportation.  Aarti is currently a first year student in public policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

FOUR INDIAN AMERICANS RECEIVE NIHY 2010 NEW INNOVATOR AWARD

Four Indian American researchers were named 2010 recipients of the national Institute of Health Director's New Innovator Award. The award addresses two important goals: stimulating highly innovative research and supporting promising new investigators. Many new investigators have exceptionally innovative research ideas, but not the preliminary data required to fare well in the traditional NIH peer review system. As part of NIH's commitment to increasing opportunities for new scientists, it has created the NIH Director's New Innovator Award to support exceptionally creative new investigators who propose highly innovative projects that have the potential for unusually high impact. This award complements ongoing efforts by NIH and its institutes and centers to fund new investigators through grants and other mechanisms.

The Indian American recipients of the award and their research project titles rre as follows:

Ritesh Agarwal, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, Project Title: Optoelectronic Nanowire Probes for Investigation of Intracellular Processes

Sandeep Robert Datta, M.D., Ph.D., Harvard Medical School, Project Title: Revealing fear: New Methods to Study Neural circuits, Behavior, and Disease

Balaji Sitharaman, Ph.D., State University of New York at Stony Brook, Project Title: Nanotechnology-based Theranostic Technology for Bone Tissue Engineering

Luke S. Theogarajan, Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara, Project Title: Bio-ionic Neural Interfaces

THREE INDIAN AMERICAN STUDENTS HONORED AT THE WHITE HOUSE SCIENCE FAIR

President Obama hosted the first ever White House Science Fair  on October 18th, bringing together middle school and high school students from around the country and their award winning science, engineering and technology projects.  The White House Science Fair was a part of the President's Educate to Innovate initiative to move American students from the middle to the top of the pack in science and math achievement over the next decade. 

The tree Indian American students honored at the Summit were Raina Jain, Gulrukh Shaeen and Anmika Patel.

Raina, a senior at Freedom  High School in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania had won earlier the first place International BioGENEius Challenge (GOPIO News June 10, 2010) for her research. Raina analyzed whether cells adhere better to rough or smooth surfaces of bioglass, which could lead to improved bone implants.

Freshman Gulrukh Shaheen along with students May Chiang and Thomas Wiygul from Madison  Central High School in Madison, Michigan won the Chrostopher Columbus Awards' grand prize for their invention, "Arthritis Magic," a device that allows arthritis sufferers to turn to standard doorknob by pulling downward rather than by twisting motion to reduce the pain of opening door.

Eighth grader Anika Patel along with Angela Riggins from Mercer Island's Forest Ridge School won first place at the 18^th Annual Toshiba ExpolraVision Awards.

During the event,President Obama viewed the exhibits of winning student projects, ranging from breakthrough basic research to new inventions, and delivered remarks congratulating the students on their desire to tackle hard problems, and drive to invent and discover.