NIACC Advisory Boards & Committees
P. Somasundaran
Chairman, Academic Advisory Board and Environmental Science Committee
Acting chairman, Science Committee
Professor Somasundaran received his B.S, from Kerala University, B.E. from Indian Institute of Science, M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. After 5 years with the International Minerals and Chemical Corporation and Reynolds Industries; he was invited by Columbia University in 1970 to join the faculty of the prestigious Henry Krumb School of Mines.
Dr. Jagdish N Bhagwati
University Professor Columbia University
Co-Chair, NIACC Economics Academic Advisory Committee
Dr. Jagdish Bhagwati received the Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1961 for a thesis titled "Essays in International Economics", supervised by Charles P. Kindleberger.
Dr. Bhagwati was an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Bhagwati currently serves on the Academic Advisory Board of Human Rights Watch (Asia) and on the board of scholars of the Centre for Civil Society. He is a Senior Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations. Dr. Bhagwati has previously served as an external advisor to the Director General of the World Trade Organization in 2001, as a special policy advisor on globalization to the United Nations in 2000, and as an economics policy advisor to the Director-General of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, from 1991 to 1993.
Dr. Arvind Panagariya
Director of the India Center at Columbia University
Co-Chair, NIACC Economics Academic Advisory Committee
Indan PM Modi”s s Chief Economist at Niti Aayog, with cabinet rank. Professor of economics, Columbia University, vice-chairman of the government of India think-tank NITI Aayog till Aug 2017 previously Chief Economist at the Asian Development Bank worked for the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organization, and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development(UNCTAD). He holds a Ph.D in economics from Princeton University.
As of 2018, Panagariya has written more than 15 books, including India: The Emerging Giant, published in March 2008. Papers written by him for the World Bank and IMF usually promote the idea of privatizing all the state owned enterprises of India. It was described as the ‘definitive book on the Indian economy’ by Fareed Zakaria.
Dr. Robert N Langer
Institute Professor (Highest level) , Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Chair, NIACC Technology Academic Advisory Committee
Dr. Langer has written over 1,250 articles and also has nearly 1,050 patents worldwide. Dr. Langer’s patents have been licensed or sublicensed to over 250 pharmaceutical, chemical, biotechnology and medical device companies.
Dr. Langer has received over 220 major awards. He is one of 5 living individuals to have received both the United States National Medal of Science (2006) and the United States National Medal of Technology and Innovation (2011). He also received the 2002 Charles Stark Draper Prize, considered the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for engineers, the 2008 Millennium Prize, the world’s largest technology prize, the 2012 Priestley Medal, the highest award of the American Chemical Society, the 2013 Wolf Prize in Chemistry, the 2014 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences and the 2014 Kyoto Prize.