Vivek Wadhwa

Vivek Wadhwa is a�Fellow at Arthur & Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance, Stanford University;�Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at the Pratt School of Engineering,� Duke University;�and�Distinguished Fellow at Singularity University.�He has been also a senior research associate at the Labor and Worklife Program of Harvard Law School, a visiting scholar at the School of Information at UC-Berkeley, and a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at The Claus M. Halle Institute for Global Learning at Emory University.��He is author of �“The Immigrant Exodus: Why America Is Losing the Global Race to Capture Entrepreneurial Talent”—which was named by The Economist as a Book of the Year of 2012, and ” Innovating Women: The Changing Face of Technology”—which documents the struggles and triumphs of women.Wadhwa oversees research at Singularity University, which educates a select group of leaders about the exponentially advancing�technologies that are soon going to change our world.� These advances—in fields such as robotics, A.I., computing, synthetic biology, 3D printing, medicine, and nanomaterials—are making it possible for small teams to do what was once possible only for governments and large corporations to do: solve the grand challenges in education, water, food, shelter, health, and security.In his roles at Stanford and Duke, Wadhwa lectures in class on subjects such as entrepreneurship and public policy, helps prepare students for the real world, and leads groundbreaking research projects.� He is an advisor to several governments; mentors entrepreneurs; and is a regular columnist for�The Washington Post,Wall Street Journal’s Accelerators Blog, Forbes, and the American Society of Engineering Education’s�Prism magazine.As a researcher, Wadhwa has studied the impact of globalization on U.S. competitiveness and remedies for the U.S. to keep its edge.His team’s report on engineering education dispelled many common myths about India’s and China’s graduation rates’ being an order of magnitude greater than those of the U.S. �Though both countries graduate many more “engineers” than the U.S. does, their definitions of those terms are loose and include everyone from mechanics to trade-school graduates. �Elite institutions in both countries do turn out world-class engineers, but the numbers are small.Subsequent research revealed why companies were going off shore and highlighted new trends in the globalization of R&D and innovation. �To explain how India was achieving success despite its weak education system, Wadhwa published a seminal research report that analyzed its surrogate education system and workforce-development practices. �Indian companies, in particular, have become global centers of excellence in high-skill areas, including software development, chip design, pharmaceutical research, and advanced engineering tasks such as aircraft-engine design. �Wadhwa found that the best Indian companies simply accepted the inadequacy of the country’s�education system and developed their own, highly innovative, training programs that more than compensated for it.Wadhwa’s teams’�research on American competitive advantages focused on entrepreneurship, skilled immigration, and university-research commercialization.��It revealed key insights into the age, education�background, and motivation of tech entrepreneurs, and�documented that more than one in four U.S. technology startups from 1995 to 2005 was founded by an immigrant.��These immigrants tended to be highly educated, with strong backgrounds in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Wadhwa found that a flawed immigration system had created a backlog of more than a million skilled workers who were waiting for permanent-resident visas and that this backlog had the potential to cause a sizeable brain drain of talent from the U.S. to other countries and a weakening of U.S. competitiveness. His subsequent research tracked returnees to India and China and determined that they were having greater success back home.Wadhwa has also researched diversity in Silicon Valley–or the lack of it. He documented that women entrepreneurs have the same backgrounds and motivations as men, but are rare in the ranks of technology CEOs or CTOs.Wadhwa has collaborated with highly regarded academics from Harvard, Duke, NYU, UC-Berkeley, and other universities. �His research, which has been supported by several grants from the Kauffman Foundation and by the Sloan Foundation, has been cited in thousands of national and international media outlets since 2007 and has gained the attention of policy makers. �Wadhwa has delivered keynote speeches at dozens of conferences, including those of the National Governors Association and the National Academy of Sciences.Before joining Duke University, Wadhwa was a technology executive known for pioneering�change and innovation. �He started his career as a software developer and gained a deep understanding of the challenges in building computer systems. �His quest to help solve some of I.T.’s most daunting problems began at New York–based investment banking powerhouse CS First Boston (CSFB), where he was Vice President of Information Services. �There he spearheaded the development of technology for creating computer-aided software-writing systems that was so successful that CSFB decided to spin off that business unit into its own company, Seer Technologies. �As its Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Wadhwa helped grow the nascent startup into a $118 million publicly traded company.With the explosive growth of the Internet, Wadhwa saw an even greater opportunity to help businesses adapt to new and fast-changing technologies, and founded Relativity Technologies. �As a result of his vision,�Forbes.com named�Wadhwa a Leader of Tomorrow by, and�Fortune�magazine�declared�Relativity one of the 25 coolest companies in the world. In Feb 2012, the U.S. Government awarded Wadhwa distinguished recognition as an� “Outstanding American by Choice”— for his “commitment to this country and to the common civic values that unite us as Americans.”�He was named by Foreign Policy Magazine as�Top 100�Global Thinker in 2012.�In 2013, TIME Magazine listed him as one of The 40 Most Influential Minds in Tech.Wadhwa holds a B.A. in Computing Studies from the University of Canberra,�in Australia, and�an MBA from New York University. �He is founding president of the Carolinas chapter of The IndUS Entrepreneurs (TIE), a non-profit global network intended to foster entrepreneurship. �He has been featured in thousands of articles in worldwide publications, including the�Wall Street Journal,�The Economist,�Forbes�magazine,�The�Washington Post,The�New York Times,�U.S. News and World Report, and�Science Magazine�and has�made many appearances on U.S. and international TV stations, including CBS/60 Minutes, PBS, CNN, ABC, NBC, CNBC, and the BBC.