Indian American Abhijit Mahalanobis, who developed vital 'pattern recognition' components in missile defence system for US Army, has been chosen as 'Scientist of the Year' by the prestigious Emerald Honors, which recognises contributions by minority scientists.
Besides Mahalanobis, a Fellow of Lockheed Martin, several Indian American scientists would receive the awards instituted by Science Spectrum magazine, to be given away on September 16 at Baltimore Convention Center in Maryland.
They include Ashok Kumar of the Army Corps of Engineers, Venkatesh Krishnan of Eli Lilly, Dharmendra Jani of Bausch and Lomb and Anil Duggal of GE Global Research Center.
Assam-born Mahalanobis, who works in Lockheed Martin's Missiles and Fire Control division, was roped in by Defence Department to solve the problem of wrong targeting by computerised missile batteries.
He looked at the way things moved and developed algorithms to analyse major joints of people and animals, which eventually led to the development of pattern recognition system.
His Automatic Target Recognition system has become the plinth of the land-based missile and fire control defence of the US Army and has set a standard for all future military computer recognition systems, Science Spectrum said in a write up about the scientist.