Indian-American elected head of IEEE Computer Society

New York, Jan 23: Dr Rangachar Kasturi of Indian origin has been elected as the head of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Computer Society (IEEECS) in a ''worldwide'' election.

Dr Kasturi, the professor and chairman of the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the University of South Florida, was earlier this month elected for the position. With nearly 100,000 members, the IEEE Computer Society is the world's leading organisation of computer professionals. Establisehed in 1946, it is the largest of the 35 societies organised under the umbrella of the IEEE, also known as ''eye-triple-E''. Dr Kasturi is expected to lay emphasis on innovation and new initiatives without much burdening the members of the institute financially.

A native of Karnataka, Dr Kasturi received his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Bangalore University in 1968. He was an engineer at the Mysore Electrical Industries, Bharat Electronics Limited and Visvesvraya Industrial and Technological Museum from 1968 to 1978.

He earned his master's and doctorate degrees in the same subject from Texas Tech University in 1980 and 1982. Dr Kasturi was instrumental in developing personal computer-based Kannada word processing software in 1985.

He was the author of ''Machine Vision'' (McGraw Hill 1995) and had several articles published in scientific journals. Dr Kasturi recipient of several honors and awards, including Penn State Engineering Society Premier Research Award -- its highest honor.

UNI