Kalpana Chawla (March 17, 1962 – February 1, 2003) was born in Karnal, India. She was the first Indian-American astronaut and first Indian woman in space. She first flew on Space Shuttle Columbia in 1997 as a mission specialist and primary robotic arm operator. In 2003, Chawla was one of the seven crew members killed in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster.

Chawla completed her earlier schooling at Tagore Baal Niketan Sr. Sec. School,

Bengali poet Kalidas Roy

Kalidas Roy (1889–1975) was a Bengali poet. Roy was a teacher and had a significant way of writing. He was born in Bardhaman and was a descendant of the great Vaishnava poet, Lochandas. His father was Jogendranath Roy. He wrote in both Arabic and Persian.

Career:

He earned his first degree from the Berhampore College, then affiliated with the University of Calcutta. Later he studied for his MA examinations in philosophy from the Scottish Church College. During his teaching career, Roy taught in various institutions like Barisha High School (24 Parganas, near Kolkata) and Mitra Institution, Bhowanipore Branch, Kolkata, where he served as the Headmaster.

Shumeet Banerji and Rajiv L. Gupta at HP

Shumeet BanerjiDirector since 2011

Mr. Banerji has served as Chief Executive Officer of Booz & Company, a consulting company, since July 2008. Previously, Mr. Banerji served in multiple roles at Booz Allen Hamilton, a consulting company and predecessor to Booz & Company, while based in offices in North America, Asia and Europe, including President of the Worldwide Commercial Business from February 2008 to July 2008, Managing Director, Europe from February 2007 to February 2008 and Managing Director, United Kingdom from 2003 to March 2007. Earlier in his career, he was a member of the faculty at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.

Rajiv L. GuptaDirector since January 2009

Mr. Gupta has served as Chairman of Avantor Performance Materials, a manufacturer of chemistries and materials, since August 2010 and as Senior Advisor to New Mountain Capital, LLC, a private equity firm, since July 2009. Previously, Mr. Gupta served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Rohm and Haas Company, a worldwide producer of specialty materials, from 1999 to April 2009. Mr. Gupta occupied various other positions at Rohm and Haas since joining the company in 1971, including Vice-Chairman from 1998 to 1999; Director of the Electronic Materials business from 1996 to 1999; and Vice-President and Regional Director of the Asia-Pacific Region from 1993 to 1998. Mr. Gupta also is a director of Tyco International Ltd., The Vanguard Group and several private companies.

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Dr. Dileep Bhandarkar joined Microsoft as a Distinguished Engineer

Dr. Dileep Bhandarkar joined Microsoft as a Distinguished Engineer responsible for server hardware architecture and standards for Global Foundation Services (GFS) in May 2007. Global Foundation Services delivers the foundational platform for Microsoft’s online services, including MSN and Windows Live-branded services, Windows Azure, Microsoft Business Productivity Online Services, Xbox LIVE, Bing as well as over 200 additional services and Web portals. He is currently chief architect for GFS, focused on driving new technology initiatives that advance the energy efficiency of Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure. He is a sought after and frequent keynote speaker at industry conferences. Some of his current work and blogs can be found at www.globalfoundationservices.com.

Bhandarkar was elected an IEEE fellow in 1997 for contributions and technical leadership in the design of complex and reduced instruction set architecture and in computer system performance analysis. In 1998, he was recognized as a distinguished alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, where he received his B. Tech in electrical engineering in 1970. He also has a M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, and has done graduate work in business administration at the University of Dallas.

Prior to joining Microsoft, Bhandarkar was director of advanced architecture in the CTO Office of Intel’s Digital Enterprise Group and a lead spokesperson for evangelizing Intel server platform technologies to the industry and financial analysts. He was an Intel Distinguished Lecturer for several years. He has held several director-level positions related to CPU and platform architecture, and strategic planning over a 12 year career at Intel. He was instrumental in driving the strategic decision to implement AMD-compatible 64-bit x86 architecture at Intel, and pioneered the adoption of energy-efficient microprocessor cores across Intel’s product line.

Prior to joining Intel in 1995, Bhandarkar spent almost 18 years at Digital Equipment Corporation, where he managed processor and system architecture, and performance analysis work related to the VAX, Prism, MIPS, and Alpha architectures. He also worked at Texas Instruments for four years in their research labs in a variety of areas including magnetic bubble memories, charge coupled devices, fault tolerant memories, and computer architecture.

Bhandarkar holds 16 U.S. patents and has published more than 30 technical papers in various journals and conference proceedings. He is also the author of a book titled “Alpha Implementations and Architecture.” He has delivered several keynote speeches at computer and financial industry conferences.

Bhandarkar and his wife love to travel and have a passion for photography. Source

Rajesh Jha is the corporate vice president for the Office 365, Exchange and Forefront products for Office at Microsoft.

Rajesh Jha is the corporate vice president for the Office 365, Exchange and Forefront products for Office at Microsoft. In this capacity, Jha leads the teams responsible for worldwide development of Microsoft Exchange, one of the world's most popular communications systems; Office 365, an online suite of productivity, communications and collaboration services for organizations of all sizes; and Forefront security products for Exchange, SharePoint and Lync. The technologies Jha and his team deliver are used daily by millions of people via PCs, the Web and mobile phones — delivered to the customer as cloud services or on-premises products.

Jha has a long track record of positive contribution to Microsoft. Joining the company right out of university in 1990, he began his career as a software design engineer, working on clients, servers and services. Jha has a master's degree in computer science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a bachelor's degree in computer science from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (Chennai). Source

Gurdeep Singh Pall is the corporate vice president for the Information Platform & Experience team at Microsoft Corp.

Gurdeep Singh Pall is the corporate vice president for the Information Platform & Experience team at Microsoft Corp., and is part of the Online Services Division's senior leadership team. He is responsible for vision, product strategy and R&D for the Bing services and platform that includes mobile, mapping, and speech.

Pall joined Microsoft in January 1990 as a software design engineer. He has worked on many breakthrough products in his tenure, starting with LAN Manager Remote Access Service. Pall was part of the Windows NT development team, working on the first version of Windows NT 3.1 in 1993 as a software design engineer, all the way through Windows XP in 2001 as general manager of Windows Networking. During his work on Windows, he led design and implementation of core networking technologies such as PPP, TCP/IP, UPnP, VPNs, routing and Wi-Fi, and parts of the operating system. Pall co-authored the first VPN protocol in the industry - Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) - which received the prestigious Innovation of the Year award from PC Magazine in 1996. He also authored several documents and standards in the networking area in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standards body in the mid-1990s.

Pall was previously the corporate vice president for the Office Lync & Speech Group, overseeing the vision, product strategy and R&D for the Microsoft Lync family of products and Microsoft Tellme services. He was appointed general manager of Windows Real-Time Communications efforts in January 2002 and helped develop a broad strategy that led to the formation of the Real Time Collaboration division and acquisition of PlaceWare Inc. (now called Microsoft Office Live Meeting). Since then, Pall has led acquisitions of media-streams.com AG and Parlano, and key industry partnerships with HP, Polycom and Aspect. Microsoft's Unified Communications efforts have received many technical and design industry awards. Pall was named one of the "15 Innovators & Influencers Who Will Make A Difference" in 2008 by Information Week. He co-authored "Institutional Memory Goes Digital," which was published by Harvard Business Review as part of "Breakthrough Ideas for 2009" and subsequently presented at the World Economic Forum 2009 in Davos.

Pall has more than 20 patents (in process or approved) in networking, VoIP and collaboration areas. He holds a master's degree in computer science from the University of Oregon and an undergraduate degree in computer engineering from Birla Institute of Technology in India.

Pall is on the board of trustees of Ashesi University. Source

S. Somasegar is the corporate vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft.

S. Somasegar is the corporate vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft. Somasegar is responsible for engineering and marketing for developer tools and services, programming languages and runtimes designed for a broad base of software developers and development teams, including the Visual Studio and Expression families of products, .NET Framework, and Team Foundation Server. Somasegar also owns developer evangelism efforts spanning the full array of Microsoft platforms. His team also owns MSDN and TechNet online properties to enable a deep connection with the developer and IT professional audiences. In addition, Somasegar is responsible for the Server and Tools Business Global Development Centers in China, India and Israel and is the executive sponsor for the India Development Center and the Israel Research and Development Center for all of Microsoft.

Somasegar joined Microsoft in 1989 and contributed to eight releases of Windows before leading Developer Division. Somasegar holds a master's degree in computer engineering from Louisiana State University and a bachelor's degree in electronics and communication engineering from Guindy Engineering College, Anna University in Chennai, India.

In 2006, Somasegar was awarded an honorary doctorate from Anna University. In 2008, he was presented the Asian American Engineer of the Year Award.

Somasegar lives in the Seattle area. He and his wife have two daughters. He frequently shares his thoughts via his blog.

Source

Rajat Taneja is corporate vice president responsible for Microsoft's commerce platform

Rajat Taneja is corporate vice president responsible for Microsoft's commerce platform. The commerce technologies power Microsoft's online consumer and enterprise services enabling multiple business models in cloud computing and delivery of services like Xbox LIVE, Office 365, Windows Phone, and Azure. The commerce platform spans Microsoft's online capabilities in over 200 countries globally serving millions of consumer and enterprise customers.

Taneja joined Microsoft in 1996 and has held a variety of leadership roles across research & development of desktop and online software solutions as well as business and technical operations. His most recent position was corporate vice president in Microsoft's online services division (OSD), responsible for the engineering program management of Microsoft's digital advertising products. The advertising products and their associated platform marketplaces power the company's multi-billion dollar advertising business and include search, display, video, gaming and mobile advertising as well as tools for advertisers and publishers. Previously within OSD, Taneja led a global engineering team responsible for Bing and MSN product search.

In earlier roles, Taneja led Microsoft's small-business efforts within the Microsoft Business Division. During his six years there, Taneja was general manager responsible for the engineering of the small-business product line including desktop and hosted suite of Microsoft Office small business services.

Before joining Microsoft, Taneja was with Digital Equipment Corp., where he was responsible for desktop and open systems products and technology solutions. Taneja also worked for several years at Wipro Technologies.

Taneja holds a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Jadavpur University, India, and an MBA from Washington State University. Source