NJ's Kean University to launch courses in Hindi and Indian culture

Encouraged by the success of its Summer Hindi program for the second year in a row, New Jersey's Kean University, known for producing largest number of teachers in the state, plans to expand its language programs to include semester long courses in Hindi and Indian culture. This was indicated by Dr. Dawood Farahi, President of the University at the Valedictory event of recently concluded STARTALK Hindi Student Program. Dr. Farahi, who along with other educational leaders of the university and prominent members of local Indian American community presented completion certificates to 18 Hindi learners. Downs Hall of Kean University was decorated with colorful flags and a variety of posters of Indian monuments, religious places, landscapes and national leaders made by students as part of class activities. About two hundred men, women and children including parents and friends of program participants attended the event. Kean STARTALK student program began on June 20 and ended on July 9. The Valedictory event was held on the concluding day when students showcased their Hindi language skills.

Paying rich tributes to ‘one of the oldest civilization of the earth that lies south of the Himalayas’, Dr. Farahi said that it made sense to educate young Americans about the culture that offered remarkable knowledge and wisdom to the rest of the world for more than 3000 years.

Dr. Farahi invited Hindi learners to use the 3D theater of the science complex for educational purpose. He later joined the students, parents and guests in a Bollywood dance on the theme of Holi.

Rutgers Professor led supercomputing team wins top prize

Manish Parashar, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rutgers University was part of a team that recently demonstrated a better way to solve research problems or industrial tasks.

Taking up a real-world problem, the group, which included experts from IBM and the University of Texas at Austin, created a massive virtual supercomputer cloud capable of solving the toughest computing tasks, according to a July 6 article in Rutgers Today.

The team won first place at an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) competition held in May, known as the IEEE SCALE 2011 Challenge.

The challenge was to demonstrate scalable computing which would allow a machine to be ramped up if more supercomputing power was needed and then draw down that power as the task got less complicated.

"We demonstrated how to build ‘federated clouds,' " Parashar told Rutgers.

A "federated cloud" is used to describe the mixing of multiple computing resources and control- ling the input of resources up or down according to need. "Our goal is to make these federated, high-performance computing clouds more useful to industry," he is quoted as saying.

Parashar runs the Center for Autonomic Computing (CAC) which is funded by the National Science Foundation. The project that he worked on with other experts was how to extract as much oil as possible from an oil field, using the processing power of their "federated cloud" to build a graphic representation of the properties of the rocks in an oil field. The graph showed where there could be higher or lower oil flow.

Raj Shah receives Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award

USAID Administrator Raj Shah, who is the highest ranking Indian- American official in the Obama Administration, has received the prestigious Pravasi Bharatiya Samman.

"I am deeply honored to receive this award from the President and the Government of India," Shah said after receiving the award from Indian Ambassador to the US Meera Shankar at a function held at her residence. "I am really proud to be a member of the Indian American community. Indian Americans have contributed to all walks of life in the United States and have a deep and passionate commitment to service and serving the people in India where our families came from," Shah said.

"This is a very special honor," he said.

Shah, who was in India last November with US President Barack Obama during his historic trip to Mumbai and New Delhi, said he will be back in India very soon.

He said the aid agency has launched a series of new partnership that Obama and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced during the November visit. "That our real peer to peer technical and scientific partnerships between the governments and the institutes and the private sector in India and their counterpart in the United States. We did that in open government. We have done that in health and human welfare and we have done that in agriculture," he said.

"In all areas we work with Indian institutions as peers, partners that are developing new technologies and are really trying to bring solutions both to people in India and to people around the world. We think that is the right way to think about our partnership," Shah said.