Washington, USA: The Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), founded by President Clinton in 1996, honors scientists and engineers who show exceptional promise for leadership in their research fields early in their careers.

Recently, President Biden acknowledged the achievements of 400 early-career scientists from across the United States with the PECASE award. Among them, 19 Indian-American scientists stood out for their groundbreaking research and contributions across 14 government agencies, celebrating their role in advancing science and technology.

Army Research Office

Mohit Bansal, a distinguished professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, leads the MURGe-Lab (UNC-NLP Group) in the Department of Computer Science. With a doctorate from UC Berkeley and a bachelor's degree from IIT Kanpur, his expertise in natural language processing and multimodal machine learning has earned him multiple ACL Best Paper Awards.

Department of Defense

Three notable Indian-American scientists were recognized for their contributions:

1. Ashutosh Giri, assistant professor at the University of Rhode Island.
2. Ritu Raman, Eugene Bell Career Development assistant professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT.
3. Ashwin Shahani, associate professor at the University of Michigan.

Department of Energy

Rajamani Gounder, the R. Norris and Eleanor Shreve professor of chemical engineering at Purdue University focuses on catalysis and sustainable chemical processes. Vedika Khemani, a physicist at Stanford University, explores the intersection of many-body quantum condensed matter physics and quantum information theory.

Department of Education

Maithilee Kunda, assistant professor of computer science and engineering, and deputy director of psychometrics at Vanderbilt University’s Frist Center for Autism and Innovation, was recognized for her work in AI and cognitive modeling.

National Institutes of Health

Several scientists received recognition, including:

• Kavita Arora, division director at UNC School of Medicine.
• Ambika Bajpayee, associate professor in bioengineering at Northeastern University.
• Jayeeta Basu, assistant professor at NYU Grossman School of Medicine.
• Ekta Khurana, associate professor at Weill Cornell Medicine.
• Kanaka Rajan, a computational neuroscientist at Harvard Medical School.
• Nirali Shah, physician-scientist and head of the Hematologic Malignancies Section at NIH's Pediatric Oncology Branch.
• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

The awardees in this category include:

• Nadir Jeevanjee, a former postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University.
• Aaditya Ramdas, associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University.
• Soumik Sarkar, professor at Iowa State University.
• Dipali Sashital, associate professor at Iowa State University.
• Bhuvana Srinivasan, professor at the University of Washington.

Department of Veterans Affairs

Umamaheswar Duvvuri, the Mendik Foundation Professor of Otolaryngology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, was the sole Indian-American honoree in this department.

These scientists stand as shining examples of excellence in research and innovation, highlighting the significant contributions of Indian Americans to global advancements in science and technology.