Carnegie Mellon’s Pradeep K. Khosla to Receive Prestigious Academic Excellence Award at 2009 Pan IIT Conference

October 7, 2009

Contact: Chriss Swaney
Carnegie Mellon University
412.268.5776

PITTSBURGH—Carnegie Mellon University's Pradeep K. Khosla will receive the prestigious 2009 Academic Excellence Award Oct. 11 at the Pan IIT entrepreneurship conference in Chicago. 

                
Khosla is a University Professor, the highest distinction faculty can achieve at Carnegie Mellon, dean of Carnegie Mellon's College of Engineering, the Philip and Marsha Dowd Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and founding director of Carnegie Mellon CyLab. He was unanimously selected from a field of more than 200 nominees to receive the Academic Excellence Award from Pan IIT, a global organization representing alumni from all Indian Institutes of Technology campuses.

           
"The IITs are renowned for producing some of the country's best global corporate leaders, academicians, technologists and entrepreneurs," said Jai Rawat, vice president of marketing for Pan IIT, USA. "Pan IIT recognizes the important contributions these alumni have made in American job creation, education and philanthropic initiatives, and we want to honor these individuals through the IIT American Leadership Awards."

           
Mark S. Kamlet, executive vice president and provost at Carnegie Mellon, said Khosla is an outstanding dean who has worked tirelessly to advance the college and the university in today's global competitive marketplace. "This latest accolade from the prestigious Pan IIT only serves to show the exceptional academic achievements and accomplishments Pradeep continues to make. A distinguished member of the National Academy of Engineering, we celebrate his successes and applaud his innovative leadership," Kamlet said.

           
"I am deeply honored by this award, and I will continue to work with my academic colleagues and industry peers to make the American research university a successful model that should be replicated around the world," said Khosla, who earlier this year received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) for his novel use of computers in engineering education. "By sharing technology and our successful academic research models, we can create more wealth and help more underdeveloped countries grow and mature."

           
A Carnegie Mellon alumnus and member of the university's engineering faculty since 1986, Khosla has invested enormous time and energy into the success of Carnegie Mellon and its engineering college. He is an internationally recognized authority on robotics, embedded systems, technology education, innovation and cybersecurity. He has been the dean of the university's College of Engineering since 2004.

           
Khosla's global reach has helped the university develop important academic footholds in Europe, Asia and Africa. As a former director of Carnegie Mellon's Information Networking Institute, Khosla doubled its enrollment, created the Master of Science in Information Security Technology and Management program and developed international graduate programs with the Athens Information Technology Institute in Athens, Greece (CyLab Athens), and CyLab Japan.

           
Prior to joining Carnegie Mellon, Khosla worked with Tata Consulting Engineers and Siemens in the area of real-time control. He has received numerous awards and fellowships, and serves on boards and companies, nonprofits and venture capital firms. He is the author of three books and has contributed more than 350 articles to journals, conferences and books.  Khosla is also co-founder of Quantapoint Inc. and BiometricCore.

           
In 2008, Khosla was selected to join the Council on Competitiveness' newly formed effort to improve America's leadership in innovative technology.

           
Khosla received his bachelor's degree in technology from IIT (Kharagpur, India) in 1980 and his master's degree and Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon in 1984 and 1986, respectively.