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NORTH AMERICAN Newsline DECEMBER 15, 2023 | The Indian Eye 30

tries are drifting further apart such scholarship is critically important, and this like India and China.
conference on geoeconomics is particularly welcome.” “Proud to help lead this important bipartisan bill with @RepMcCormick
Before ascending to the IMF leadership, Gita Gopinath was a professor at & @CongressmanRaja to improve our immigrant visa system and ease the
Harvard University between 2005 and 2022. Prior to that, she was an assistant harsh effects of the immigrant visa backlog,” with a tagged post from Im-
professor of economics at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Busi- migration Voice saying, “introducing H.R.6542 – the Immigration Visa Ef-
ness. She received her Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University, after ficiency and Security Act. We look forward to visiting the Hill next week to
earning a B.A. from Lady Sri Ram College, and M.A. degrees from the Delhi create awareness on why this critical bipartisan bill is necessary to pass this
School of Economics and the University of Washington. Congress,” Jayapal posted on X.
The bill has received support from various immigration advocacy groups,
KRYSTLE KAUL such as Immigration Voice, which tweeted that the bill would “provide relief to
National security expert is over 1.2 million high-skilled immigrants stuck in the green card backlog, some
of whom will otherwise have to wait 134 years to receive their green cards.”

running for US Congress RAVI DAHIYA

Scientist experimenting to give
rystle Kaul, if elected, would
be only the second Indi- robots near-human ‘skin’
Kan-American woman to be
elected to House of Representatives
after Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal
Krystle Kaul, an Indian-origin
foreign policy and national securi-
ty expert with roots in Kashmir, has
announced that she will run for the
US House of Representatives from
a Congressional district in Virginia
with a focus on core issues like public
safety, education and healthcare.
Kaul, if elected in 2024, would
be only the second Indian-American
woman to be elected to the House of Representatives after Congresswoman
Pramila Jayapal.
Pramila Jayapal’s sister Susheela Jayapal has also thrown her hat in the
race to the Congress from the third Congressional District of Oregon.
Both Kaul and Susheela Jayapal, from the Democratic Party, will have to
win the party’s primary next year to bag the party’s nomination for the No-
vember 2024 general elections.
Fluent in eight languages, including Hindi, Punjabi, Dari, Urdu and Ar-
abic, Kaul, the first Kashmiri-origin person to ever run for Congress, said her
decision to run for the 10th Congressional District of Virginia came after ndia-born Professor Ravinder Dahiya of Northeastern University’s Col-
Democratic Congresswoman Jennifer Wexton who has represented the con- lege of Engineering in Boston (Massachusetts), a renowned expert on
stituency since 2019 announced her decision not to seek re-election. Ielectronic skin, is leading a project that is expected to help create a new
Kaul has spent her professional life in the national security establishment
from the Pentagon to think tanks and the defence industry. generation of smart robots with human-like physical abilities.
Earlier Prof Ravinder Dahiya was based in Scotland where he spent 10
She said education, healthcare and public Safety are the “three core is-
sues” she would focus on in her campaign. years creating electronic skin, to work on a new project that will grant robots
almost human physical attributes.
His work is expected to give robots the versatility and tactile ( touch sen-
PRAMILA JAYAPAL sation) ability of humans by enabling electronic skin used in robots to expand
Representative introduces US and contract similar to the way human skin does.
Prof. Dahiya was recently granted a National Science Foundation grant

immigrant visa reform bill of a $230,000 for a project to develop “Flexible and compressible e-Skin inte-
grated with soft magnetic coil based ultra-thin actuator and touch sensor for
robotics applications.”
“Replication of Natural Skin characteristics is critically important for
S Representative Pramila smooth operations of Robots. The touch sensory feedback from skin can al-
Jayapal along with Rep. Rich low robots to help elderly with daily tasks, and to safely interact with real
UMcCormick and Rep. Raja world objects (e.g., grasping fragile objects). Likewise, skin on surgical tools
Krishnamo, introduced a bill in the can allow clinicians to remotely feel the body parts to enable new research
US House of Representatives that directions in digital health,” the project statement reads.
would eliminate the per-country caps Prof Dahiya, an alumnus of IIT Delhi, obtained his MTech, gained his
on employment-based green cards. PhD in humanoid technology from the Italian Institute of Technology and the
It will also increase the family-based University of Genoa in Italy in 2008.
green card limit. The bill is called the
HR6542 Act. It aims to address the To read more about Indian diaspora and Global Indians,
long-standing backlog of green card log on to and follow our website www.TheIndianEYE.com
applicants, especially from countries

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