Pradeep Khosla, UCSD Chancellor, says Indian Americans need to give back
Indian engineers in the U.S., having attained professional and financial success, have a “great responsibility towards the broader community to give back,” said Pradeep Khosla, chancellor of the University of California, San Diego.
Khosla was the keynote speaker at last week’s annual meeting of the American Society of Engineers of Indian Origin (ASEI).
Indians need to follow Khosla’s advice. Several studies, including by the MacArthur Foundation, confirm what is widely known, namely that wealthy Indians give little, if anything, to the communities from which they derive their wealth. Many Indians perceive that their success is based on hard work, with no aid from the government, society or others. So, unlike Bill Gates and other successful Americans, Indians ignore their duty to fund social programs, including those providing equal opportunity for education and good jobs to the less fortunate.
While some Indian engineers and other professionals in America have set up family foundations, there are few disclosures aboiut which causes they support and how much funding they donate each year. This raises questions about whether the foundations are merely vehicles to provide high-paying positions to unqualified family members and/or to avoid or reduce paying taxes.
Khosla complimented ASEI for organizing knowledge sharing events, youth programs, student chapters and a Mentor Connect program, in which early tenure engineers get career guidance from senior professionals.
His efforts at giving back to the community include serving on the advisory boards of Rady Children’s Hospital and Health Center, the Cecil and Ida M. Green Foundation for Earth Sciences, and the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine. He has served on the Council of Deans of the Aeronautics Advisory Committee, NASA; the National Research Council Board on Manufacturing and Engineering Design; and the Senior Advisory Group for the DARPA Program on Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems.
Khosla told the ASEI gathering the story of how he came to run UC San Diego, a top US Public University with an annual budget of $6.1 Billion. The university has over 40,000 students, including 30,000 undergraduates, enrolled in more than 130 academic degree programs, ranging from science, management, engineering and medicine to social science, international studies, and arts and humanities. It’s 1,200 acre campus, on the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, sits amidst a cluster of biotech businesses in La Jolla.
Chancellor since 2012, Khosla initiated and led UC San Diego’s first-ever Strategic Plan and launched a $2 billion campaign to transform the university, physically and intellectually, including increasing access for underserved populations. He also holds a teaching position of distinguished professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at UC San Diego.
Khosla has written three books and more than 350 journal articles and conference and book contributions. His research interest includes internet-enabled collaborative design, software composition, robotic systems and distributed information systems.
Earlier, Khosla spent much of his career at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, including as Dean of the College of Engineering. He joined Carnegie as an Assistant Professor in 1986.
Born in Bombay, Khosla, 64, received his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, in 1980, and his MS and Ph.D. degrees in electrical and computer engineering in 1984 and 1986 at Carnegie Mellon.
Other speakers at the ASEI virtual event included its president Piyush Malik, who is based in the Silicon Valley, Muthu Sivananthan from Michigan, Sri Gavini from Southern California, Venkat Gurunathan from Washington DC and Ashish Mehta from San Diego.
Last month ASEI launched Engineering Tales a YouTube series of conversations with distinguished members. The inaugural episode featured an interview by Piyush Malik of the advanced materials and nanotechnology expert Thomas Abraham, an entrepreneur and ASEI Board member since 2013.
ASEI was founded in 1983 in Detroit, Michigan. It now has chapters in Michigan, Southern California, Silicon Valley, San Diego, and Washington, DC.