WASHINGTON (TIP): It was a double bonanza for Indian academics at #PurdueUniversity, Indiana. Indian American Karthik Kannan, a Professor at Purdue’s Krannert School of Management, was named to the 2017-18 class of Jefferson Science Fellows, an initiative of the Office of Science and Technology Adviser to the U.S. Secretary of State. Shovik Bandyopadhyay an MPhil student of Haematology department at Purdue University was among the 15 students named as 2017-2018 Churchill Scholars by the Winston Churchill Foundation of the United States.

Karthik Kannan is also academic director for the MBA programs (two-year MBA, STEM-MBA, Weekend MBA), academic co-director for MS in BAIM (Business Analytics and Information Management), and co-director for IAC (Information and Analytics Center).

Kannan has proposed the concept of “Design for Instincts” as a way to organize businesses in the current age, and his research focuses on the same theme. Specifically, he studies how different aspects of information technology may be used to exploit human instincts and biases in order to nudge/manipulate behavior. His papers have been accepted in several leading conferences and journals in the information systems area. He is a member of AIS and INFORMS. He is also a CERIAS Fellow and Krannert’s Faculty Fellow.

Shovik Bandyopadhyay, of Eureka, Missouri, studies biological science in the College of Science and Honors College. He is laying the foundation to pursue his goal to discover new and better treatments for blood cancers. Bandyopadhyay, a 2016 Goldwater Scholar, has conducted research in the lab of Ji-Xin Cheng, a professor of biomedical engineering and chemistry, and spent his summers in the lab of Stephen Oh at Washington University in St. Louis. He initiated a cooperative effort between their laboratories to research the combination of two drugs for a synergistic interaction to fight chronic myelogenous leukemia.

The Churchill Scholarship provides funding to American students for a year of Master’s study in science, mathematics, and engineering at the University of Cambridge, based at Churchill College. The Scholarship was set up at the request of Sir Winston Churchill in order to fulfil his vision of US-UK scientific exchange with the goal of advancing science and technology on both sides of the Atlantic, helping to ensure our future prosperity and security.