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Sonal Shah, the recipient of the India Abroad Person of the Year Award for 2003, is among 15 Indian Americans who have been chosen for this year's Massachesetts Institute of Technology Sloan's Indus Technovator awards.
Shah was chosen under the grassroots development/energy category.
The Indian Business Club will honour the winners at a function in MIT on Wednesday.
The awards were instituted last year to honour significant contributions by young innovators and enterpreneurs of South Asian origin working on cutting-edge technology with far-reaching applications.
Shah is the co-founder and US director of Indicorps and also associate director for economic and international policy at the Center for American Progress.
Indicorps, founded in 2001 by Shah and her siblings, Roopal and Anand, is a non-profit organisation that helps young Indian-Americans reconnect with their heritage by providing them one-year fellowships to spend time in India doing community work.
Indicorps designs and develops projects with local organisations to boost exchange of ideas and expertise. It aims to cultivate a new generation of Indian-American leaders with a better understanding of India.
More than 150 nominations were received for the award from around 15 countries in four categories. The nominees were judged by an eminent panel of judges that included Howard Anderson of MIT Sloan School of Managment, Desh Deshpande, chairman of TiE Global, and Ram Sasishekharan of Massachusetts of Technology.