Naperville, Illinois: The Alumni Cell of Banaras Hindu University (BHU) honored Dr Manu K Vora, noted quality control scientist and philanthropist, with the BHU Distinguished Alumnus Award.

Prof Anil Kumar Agrawal, head, IIT (BHU) training and placement cell accepted the award on behalf of Dr Vora, at a special ceremony held at the Swatantrata Bhawan of Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi recently.

As part of the first centennial celebration of BHU (2015-2016), an international alumni meeting was held at the campus. Distinguished Alumnus Awards were conferred on 17 former students by Ram Naik, Governor of Uttar Pradesh, Manoj Sinha, Minister of State for Railways, and Dr Girish Chandra Tripathi, Vice-Chancellor of BHU.

Dr Vora is chairman and president of Business Excellence, Inc., a global quality management consulting service firm. He has over 40 years of leadership experience guiding Fortune 500 companies with Baldrige Performance Excellence framework.

For over 45 years Dr Vora is active in community service. In 1989, he established the Blind Foundation for India to serve over 15 million blind people in India which accounts for 1/3rd of the world\'s blind people. The BFI team has raised over $4 million to support 150,000 free Cataract operations, distributed over 10,000 Braille Kits to blind children for their education, donated 115 mobile vans for transporting eye doctors and patients, and examined over 750,000 school-going children for their eyesight and provided necessary interventions. So far, over one million people in India have their eyesight checked through the BFI.

For his lifetime of community service, he has received 2011 Ellis Island Medal of Honor, 2010 US President\'s Volunteer Service Award, and 2015 and 2000 Rotary International Paul Harris Fellow Medal.

He is a past vice president of the American Society for Quality (ASQ) board of directors. He is also an ASQ Fellow and certified quality engineer (CQE).

He is a senior examiner of the Asia Pacific Global Performance Excellence Award Program since 2004.

In 1968, he received a JN Tata Scholarship to pursue his graduate studies in the US. He is a recipient of 2013 Keller Graduate School of Management\'s Top 40 Alumni for the 40th Anniversary award and also received the 2012 IIT Chicago Alumni Medal.

Dr Vora holds an MBA (1985) with marketing management, Ph.D. (1975) and MS (1970) in chemical engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, and BS (1968) in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (BHU), Varanasi in India.

He has delivered over 510 presentations around the world on business excellence and quality management topics and has published over 55 articles in professional journals. ASQ has bestowed on him Five Medals (Distinguished Service Medal, Grant Medal, Hutchens Medal, Ishikawa Medal, and Lancaster Medal).

For over 22 years, as an adjunct professor, he has taught operations management courses at various business schools globally. He is affiliated with over 70 educational institutes around the world.

He has taught to well over 10,000 people globally. He has delivered a leadership excellence series on life-long transferable soft skills and quality management knowledge via Google Hangouts in India and USA and reached out to over 130,00 people via recorded YouTubes since December 2013.

Dr Manu K Vora of Illinois honored with Distinguished Alumnus Award by Banaras Hindu University