Two Indian-American innovation pioneers — Arogyaswami Paulraj for his MIMO wireless technology and Sumita Mitra for her nanocomposite dental materials — have been inducted into the prestigious National Inventors Hall of Fame this year. Arogyaswami Paulraj and Sumita Mitra along with 13 other innovation pioneers would be formally felicitated during the innovation industry’s most highly anticipated event – “The Greatest Celebration of American Innovation” – on May 2-3 organised in partnership with the US Patent and Trademark Office.
National Inventors Hall of Fame, releasing its list of 2018 inductees, said Dr Paulraj’s wireless technology has revolutionised broadband wireless Internet access for billions of people worldwide. MIMO (Multiple-Input Multiple-Output) improves both transmission data rates and expands network coverage. It is the essential foundation for all current (Wi-Fi and 4G mobile) and future broadband wireless communications. It is a wonderful honour. I feel enormously humbled to be counted among the inventors who have made the modern world possible,” Dr Paulraj said.
Last month, he assumed a chairmanship of the Department of Telecom’s Steering Committee “to deliberate and finalise Vision, Mission, Goals and Roadmaps for 5G India 2020. We in India are truly privileged to have Dr Paulraj guiding the DoT and the Government of India at this point in time and for taking the time out to help us put India on the 5G global map,” Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan said in a statement issued by IndiaTechOnline. Arogyaswami Paulraj said, “I have always felt that India needs to join the club of countries like US, China, Europe, South Korea and Japan that dominate communications and computing technology.”
Dr Paulraj said when he joined Stanford in 1992, he had not worked in wireless technology, since his prior years in India were spent on sonar systems with brief forays into Artificial Intelligence and computing. It was perhaps being an outsider that helped me come up with this transformative idea. Like many big breakthroughs, MIMO faced significant skepticism for a few years, but it eventually took off and is now the foundation of all wireless systems,” he said.
Dr Jagdish Chandra Bose, who is known for his breakthrough work in radio and microwave optics in 1904, is another Indian in the list of US patent holding pioneers in wireless technology. Born in Pollachi, Tamil Nadu, in 1944, Dr Paulraj joined the Indian Navy at age 15. Impressed with his academic record, the Navy sent him to the Indian Institute of Technology (Delhi), where he earned a Ph.D for advances to signal filtering theory.
