Praveen Chaudhari takes the helm at Brookhaven National Laboratory

Dr Praveen Chaudhari became the Director of Brookhaven National Laboratory, which hosts the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS), from 1 April 2003. Prior to this he spent 36 years at IBM where he rose from a member of the research team to the Vice President of Science in 1982. He is well known to the synchrotron radiation community through his work on condensed matter physics. Dr Chaudhari gained his bachelors degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, and earned his doctorate in 1966 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in physical metallurgy. His recent research interests have been in nanoscience and superconductivity.

The science programs flourished during Chaudhari's management tenure in the IBM Research Division. The work carried out became the basis of the USD 2-billion-a-year optical-disk industry and IBM scientists captured Nobel Prizes in physics for two consecutive years, in 1986 for developing the scanning tunneling microscope, and in 1987 for discovering high-temperature superconductivity in a new class of materials.

Chaudhari was executive secretary of President Reagan's Advisory Council on Superconductivity (1988). He was a member of the National Commission on Superconductivity, which reported its findings to President Bush (1989). In 1988, Chaudhari reported on science and technology to Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi of India; in 1993, at the request of the Indian Minister for Sciences and Technology, he led an IBM group to evaluate India's parallel computer activities. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a fellow of the American Physical Society, a member of the National Academy of Engineering and an Associate Fellow of the Third World Academy of Sciences.