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NORTH AMERICAN Newsline JANUARY 26, 2024 | The Indian Eye 30

NEWSMAKERS OF THE WEEK

Selected stories about Indian diaspora from our website www.theindianeye.com

TARANJIT SINGH SANDHU SOMUDRO GUPTA

India’s Ambassador to US Chef Robotics appoints techie as

set to retire head of software

ood service and production is
the fourth most common job
Fin the US. And yet, there’s a
crushing labor shortage with over
1,137,400 jobs unfilled. Chef Ro-
botics is filling this gap. Chef builds
AI-enabled robots to help food com-
panies overcome the labor shortage
and increase production volume with
Chef’s robot solutions powered by
ChefOS, Chef’s AI brain. Chef’s goal
is to accelerate the advent of intelli-
gent machines in the physical world
to empower humans to do what hu-
mans do best.
To date, Chef Robotics has made over 1M meals in production. The com-
pany has robots in production at food companies in the US and Canada and
plans to more than quadruple the fleet in 2024. Chef has announced the hir-
ing of Somudro Gupta as Head of Software.
Prior to this, Mr. Gupta was Head of Autonomous Vehicle Engineering
at Embark Trucks, a publicly-traded company that was acquired by Applied
Intuition in 2022. Over his five-year tenure, Mr. Gupta joined as the first soft-
ware engineer where he built much of Embark’s autonomy stack; he went
ndia’s ambassador to the US, Taranjit Singh Sandhu, will retire by month on to lead the entire autonomy division at Embark, representing 45 software
end after serving a 35 year long career, that was marked by four postings engineers.
Iin America. “I’m thrilled to be joining Chef,” said Mr. Gupta. “My career in autono-
Sandhu, a 1988-batch Indian Foreign Service officer, served as the am- mous driving taught me how to build and deploy intelligent robots in the real
bassador in Washington DC since early 2020. He also served as deputy chief world. I believe the physical world is the next frontier for AI, and I’m excited
of mission between 2013 and 2016, under external affairs minister S Jaishan- to apply what I’ve learned (while combining my interests in food and robots)
kar who was then serving as the ambassador to DC. to a company like Chef to scale deployments at customer sites around the
Sandhu’s first posting to US was as a young political officer handling world. Chef has already proven itself with its early deployments, and now,
the US Congress in the wake of the nuclear tests in 1998, giving him a deep given my background in AI, I’m looking forward to helping them scale the
grounding in American politics. He has also served stint in India’s permanent company to thousands of robots.”
mission to the UN in New York.
Sandhu was set to retire in January 2023, but a 1 year extension was giv- DR. VIVEK MURTHY
en. The last year proved to be a milestone year for India-US relationship as
both both sides agreed on the GE jet engine deal, major investments in the Doctor to be the US
semiconductor space, the agreement on Predator drones, and a decision to
deepen collaboration across multiple global theatres. During the Indian pres-
idency of G20, Sandhu also played a role in ensuring that the US remained Representative on WHO Board
broadly supportive of New Delhi’s quest for a consensus-based declaration.
His grandfather, Teja Singh Samundri, was one of the early leaders of ndian-American Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has been named again to
the Gurudwara reform movement. He is the only non-guru in whose memory serve as the US representative on the executive board of the World Health
there is a building in the Golden Temple complex in Amritsar. His father, IOrganization (WHO) by President Joe Biden.
Bishan Singh Samundri, was the first Vice-Chancellor of Guru Nanak Dev Dr. Murthy’s nomination was re-sent as his confirmation to the position
University in Amritsar. He recently wrote an ode to his father on his birthday, had been pending in the Senate since October 2022.
“Remembering my father Prof Bishan Singh Samundri on his birthday. An Dr. Vivek H. Murthy was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in March 2021 to
agriculture scientist in Punjab, he went to US for higher studies on scholar- serve as the 21st Surgeon General of the United States. He previously served
ship and returned home to serve as the Principal of historic Khalsa College as the 19th Surgeon General under President Obama.
at Amritsar and later founder vice-chancellor of Guru Nanak Dev University, As the Nation’s Doctor, the Surgeon General’s mission is to help lay the
Amritsar.” Continued on next page... >>

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