Indian origin scientist gets Russia’s highest tech award

US based Indian-origin scientist B. Jayant Baliga is presented with Russia’s top technology award ” Global Energy Prize”. Along with Baliga,another scientist Nakamura, a Nobel Prize winner  also received the prestigious award from Russian President Vladimir Putin for his outstanding work on blue light emitting diode LED.For his pioneering work in the field of energy management that led to increased efficiency and savings.

• Russians consider Global Energy Prize as electronic equivalent to  Nobel Prize .
• The digital switch or insulate gate bipolar transistor IGBT, invented by Nakura when he was working at General Electric research and development centre in 1983, switches energy hundreds of  thousands of times per second  thereby increasing efficiency of any equipment manifold .
• According to a statement given by Nakura, every equipment form refrigerator to light to motor vehicle requires energies to be used in an efficient manner.
• IGBT plays major role and without that everything would become halted.

Accolades for Jayant Baliga—

• Scientific American Magazine called him as the eight heroes of  the semiconductor revolution.
• Highest American Technology Prize ”IEEE Medal of Honour”awarded to Baliga for the year 2014, by the President of USA, Obama.
• As a distinguished professor in North Carolina University, Mr Jayant Baliga’s invention blends both electrical and electronic engineering and helped in saving around $24 trillion dollars  by increasing the efficiency.
• Baliga’s achievements had brought high energy efficiency of over 40% for every day motors like the electric bulb like CFL better by 75%  and motor vehicles able to save over 10% fuel more.
• Inspite of facing many criticisms from his colleagues, Baliga’s work stood the test of time and he had won over his critics.
• Baliga feels that India has potential that is not tapped to the maximum, as his invention could not be done in India since it needs great amount of infrastructure

Jayant Baliga’s Career—

• He completed his graduate degree in electrical engineering from the prestigious IIT Madras and went to USA for his MS and PhD.
• He worked for General Electric Company New York for 15 years and then joined North Carolina State university as professor in 1988.
• In 1997, he was promoted as Distinguished University Professor