Raj Reddy, who is an engineering graduate from the University of Madras and has been a member of the Presidential ITAC since February 1997, was named by Clinton along with Irving Wladawsky-Berger, a physicist, to serve as co-chairs of the body for a two-year term.

ITAC is a billion-dollar research and development program that provides advice and information to the Executive on high performance computing and communication.

"The President today announced his intent to appoint Raj Reddy and Irving Wladawsky-Berger to serve as co-chairs of the PITAC," the White House announced today, clarifying that the "intent to appoint" was tantamount to an appointment since the position did not require any confirmation.

Reddy, a 1958 graduate of the GuindyEngineering College near Madras, is currently a Professor of Computer Science and Robotics in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. He began his academic career as an Assistant Professor at Stanford in 1966 and later served as the founding Director of the Robotics at CMU from 1979 to 1991. He was also the Dean of School of Computer Science at CMU from 1991 to 1999.

Dr Reddy's research interests include the study of human-computer interaction and artificial intelligence. His current research projects include speech recognition and understanding systems; gigabit networks; universal digital libraries, learning on demand, and collaboration on the web.

Clinton's appointment of Reddy is in tune with his own view that Indians are beginning to play a significant role in the information technology field, a point he made during his meeting with then prime minister Gujral in New York in 1997.

Reddy is the second Indian-American to occupy a high technical office in the current White Housedispensation after Clinton appointed Dr Arati Prabhakar to head the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 1995.

Every year, thousands of skilled Indian engineers, particularly in the IT sector, are flocking to the US where there is a great demand for such high-tech labour. By one estimate, some 50,000 Indian computer professionals have come to the US during the past year, after American authorities raised the cap on temporary import of skilled labour under the H1-B category from 65,000 to 115,000 per year.

Now, when the US Congress reconvenes later this month, some American lawmakers, mostly Republican, want to raise this cap to a staggering 200,000 as they seek to woo high-tech companies.

The end result of this wave of skilled worker inflow is that Indians are becoming increasingly visible in information technology sectors.