Our Bureau
Southfield, MI
The American Society of Engineers of Indian Origin (ASEI), a 501 c3 non-profit, successfully hosted ASEIcon2023 — its 35th National Convention focusing on NextGeneration Engineering Innovations recently at Hotel Radisson, Southfield, MI. One of the highlights of ASEI National conventions is its celebratory Awards gala dinner and entertainment event that honors the contribution of outstanding individuals to the engineering profession, society and community at large.
The annual ASEI awards were presented as follows in different categories:
ASEI Lifetime Achievement: Thomas Kurian, CEO, Google Cloud; ASEI Entrepreneur of the Year: Dheeraj Pandey, Founder and CEO, DevRev; ASEI Scientist of the Year: Dr. Nina Tandon, CEO, EpiBone; ASEI Engineer of the Year- AI: Rama Akkiraju, Vice President, NVIDIA; ASEI Engineer of the Year- Transportation and Sustainability: Dr. Praveen Vayalamkuzhi, CEO Mobility Vision; ASEI Service Excellence Award: Surbhi Kaul, Vice President, Juniper Networks; Hari B. Bindal ASEI Founder’s Award: Muthu Sivananthan, Energy and Materials Industry Solutions Leader, Dassault Systèmes.
The Corporate Excellence Recognition Program (CERP) was also revived as part of ASEI Corporate Connect initiative and employees nominated by sponsoring organizations Detroit Engineering Products and GHD were recognized. GMS Registrar honored the original founders of the CERP (Dr. Ravi Rout, Jag Kottha, and Mahesh Reddy) in addition to their Vice President Anjali Kottha.
ASEI President Piyush Malik said, “On behalf of ASEI, I am very pleased to recognize & congratulate each awardee for their dedication, hard work, and exemplary contribution in their respective fields. For the past 4 decades, ASEI has served the community well in Indo-US technology relations and provided mentoring, networking and learning opportunities for young technologists & engineers through our strategic initiatives. We are now gearing up for our future 40 years!”
The objective of this convention was to provide a forum to promote and share advancements related to latest cutting-edge innovations and technologies across various engineering disciplines. The convention was attended by over 400 professionals including scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, and corporate leaders across the USA. ASEIcon2023 featured keynotes and multiple interactive sessions with prominent business and technology leaders, scientists, media personalities, educators, policy makers, and venture capitalists.
ASEIcon 2023 featured a stellar line-up of speakers. The opening keynote to invigorate the audience was by Mamatha Chamarthi, Chief Growth Officer at Stellantis. She spoke about disruption and networked talent, encouraging attendees to have bolder planet-wide vision to disrupt oneself as well as their organization. She emphasized “Discover your authentic leadership style and learn to exit your comfort zone”. Mamatha lauded ASEI on its “School to University to Profession to Planet” vision that was articulated by Piyush Malik in his “State of the Union ASEI@40” address just before her keynote.
Rophin Paul, CEO of Wipro Pari, Ashwini Balasubramanian of Harley Davidson and Ankur Ganguli of General Motors, were amongst 30+ CxO and engineering executives who spoke at the convention. Apart from talks and panel discussions in parallel tracks covering Automotive, Mobility, Infrastructure and Energy, there was a youth technology exposition (YTE) featuring projects by prize winning STEM students as well.
A deep-dive on policy decisions for the Mobility Industry by K. Venkatesh Prasad, of CAR was the closing keynote where he stressed that “Innovation today needs research and investments from decades ago”. He concluded that our future is bright since the US is investing heavily in Mobility, AI, Space, Materials, etc. which will keep us relevant on the global stage.
We heard “Rock That “ loud and clear from Shawn Lee of TEDx Detroit who energized the awards banquet audience with his talk on DEI, people investment and selfless giving.
