America
Indian American scientist to get Russia’s highest tech award
By
Hardev SanotraSt Petersburg, June 18
B. Jayant Baliga, a
US-based Indian-origin scientist, is being awarded Russia's top
technology award in recognition of his work as a major development in
energy management which brought about huge increase in efficiency and
major savings.
The award will presented to Professor Baliga and
Shuji Nakamura on Friday by Russian President Vladimir Putin at a
ceremony here.
Nakamura, a Nobel Laureate, is being recognised
for his work on blue light emitting diodes (LEDs). In Russia, the Global
Energy Prize is known as the electronics equivalent of the Nobel Prize.
Professor
Baliga invented the digital switch or the insulated gate bipolar
transistor (IGBT) while working at General Electrical research &
development centre in New York state in the US in 1983. The IGBT
switches energy hundreds of thousands of times a second, raising the
efficiency of any equipment manifold.
"Every equipment from your
refrigerator to lights to motor vehicles has the need to use energy
efficiently. If you take away the IGBT today, almost everything will
come to a standstill," Baliga told a visiting IANS correspondent on the
eve of receiving the award.
Scientific American magazine called
him among the 'eight heroes of the semiconductor revolution', and
President Barack Obama awarded him the highest American technology prize
last year and he is the 2014 recipient of the IEEE Medal of Honour, a
rare distinction.
Professor Baliga, who now teaches to the North
Carolina university as 'distinguished university professor', said that
the IGBT that his invention combines two streams of electronics and
electrical engineering and has possibly saved the world around $24
trillion dollars by raising efficiency, according to one detailed
calculation.
"I got zero out of it. But then I did it all for humanity."
Of
course, says Prof Baliga, that he did make some money when he started
three companies, but these were financed by venture capitalists who
exited with enormous profits at the right time.
He says every
motor today is at least 40 percent more efficient, the light bulb like
the CFL better by almost 75 percent and a motor vehicle saves over 10
percent fuel because of his invention. He has written 19 books and over
500 papers in peer-reviewed journals.
Baliga passed out of IIT
Madras before going to the US for his MS and PhD after electrical
engineering after which he joined GE where he spent over 15 years.
After
his 'switch' was invented, several of his colleagues told him that it
would not work, and many scientists said he would fall "flat on his
face". But he said it stood the test of time.
The chairman of GE
at that time, Jack Welch flew down especially to meet him when he heard
what it could do. GE used the switch in the several of the equipments
it sold, including medical devices.
A US citizen since 2000, he
now has very little connection with India and does not travel to his
home country much, especially after his parents and parents of his wife
passed away. But, says Prof Baliga, an invention like his is unlikely in
India, because it needs huge research infrastructure to be in place
from universities to industries.
He feels, that India has a potential which has not been fully used, although in software "it has made great strides".
Could
a Nobel be on its way in the future? "I used to say no way," but with
so many recognitions and this "global prize where I am being feted with a
Nobel Laureate, who knows", he says. His regret though is that India
does not know much about him.
"Top scientists that I meet always
ask me, why has India not recognised your achievement?" And with
characteristic modesty, Baliga told IANS, "I tell them that perhaps my
country does not know about what I did."
(Hardev Sanotra is in St
Petersburg at the invitation of St Petersburg International Economic
Forum. He can be contact at [email protected])