Distinguished Fellows

Subbiah Arunachalam

Subbiah Arunachalam (known to friends as Arun) started his career as a research chemist, but found his calling in information science. In the past four decades, he has been a student of chemistry, a laboratory researcher (at the Central Electrochemical Research Institute and the Indian Institute of Science), an editor of scientific journals (at the Publications and Information Directorate of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and the Indian Academy of Sciences), the secretary of a scholarly academy of sciences (IASc), a teacher of information science (at the Indian National Scientific Documentation Centre), and a development researcher (at the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation and the Indian Institute of Technology Madras). While working with M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, he initiated the South-South Exchange Traveling Workshop to facilitate hands on cross-cultural learning for knowledge workers from Africa, Asia and Latin America engaged in ICT-enabled development.

Arun is on the editorial boards of six international refereed journals including Journal of Information Science, Scientometrics, and Journal of Community Informatics; a member of the international advisory board of IICD, The Hague, a trustee of the Electronic Publishing Trust for Development, and a Trustee of the Voicing the Voiceless Foundation. Improving information access both for scientists and for the rural poor; scientometrics, ICT-enabled development and open access are among his current research interests.

Lawrence Liang

Lawrence Liang is a graduate of the National Law School. He subsequently pursued his Masters degree in Law and Development at Warwick, on a Chevening Scholarship. His key areas of interest are law, technology and culture, the politics of copyright and he has been working closely with Sarai, New Delhi on a joint research project Intellectual Property and the Knowledge/Culture Commons. A keen follower of the open source movement in software, Lawrence has been working on ways of translating the open source ideas into the cultural domain. He has written extensively on these issues and is the author of The Public is Watching: Sex, Laws and Videotape and A Guide to Open Content Licenses. Lawrence has taught at NLS, the Asian College of Journalism, Nalsar, etc., and is currently working on a Ph.D. on the idea of cinematic justice at Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Rishab Aiyer Ghosh

Rishab Aiyer Ghosh is a researcher based in Maastricht. He is an Open Source Initiative board member, the founding international and managing editor of the peer-reviewed journal First Monday, and the Programme Leader of FLOSS at UNU-MERIT. He has undertaken several global, high-profile studies on Free Software. He is a jury member for Global Bangemann Challenge (now Stockholm Challenge Award), a prestigious prize awarded to IT projects with socio-economic impact by the mayor of Stockholm and founder member of the GII Internet Commerce Brain Trust. From 1995–1999, Rishab has worked as an editor at The Indian Techonomist, an analytical newsletter on Indian media and communications targeted at a global audience, an analyst and newsletter contributor for US-based Paul Kagan Associates, and a weekly columnist on Internet society (Electric Dreams). He still writes regularly, with over half a million words published in journals, newspapers and magazines worldwide, from PC Quest India to Wired Magazine, USA. From 2008, he heads the Collaborative Creativity Group at UNU-MERIT.

Hans Varghese Mathews

Hans Varghese Mathews read philosophy as an undergraduate, at the University of Southern California, studying logic and aesthetics; and went on to obtain a doctorate in mathematics, from the University of Wisconsin, studying algebraic topology primarily, with mathematical logic and philosophy as subsidiary subjects. He has been a research associate with the Indian Statistical Institute, and has written extensively on visual art for Frontline; he currently directs mathematical modelling for an analytics firm, and is a contributing editor to the online journal Phalanx. He has an abiding interest in the formal understanding of painting and poetry; and a more recent and dominating interest in the mathematisation of the social sciences.

  Shyam Ponappa

Shyam Ponappa works in the areas of investment banking and management consulting, after beginning his career in banking.  His experience in the last 25 years is in alliances, financial placements, M&A, and business strategy for clients in IT, telecommunications, power, oil/energy, airlines, biotechnology, banking/financial services, hotels, shipping, railroads, manufacturing (fertilizers and chemicals, textiles, generators, motorcycles, cement, high-technology products), agri-business, law firms, and retail enterprises. 
He has also advised on public policy since 1990, primarily in telecommunications.  A columnist for the Business Standard, he writes on infrastructure and managing economic reforms (http://organizing-india.blogspot.com). He has an MBA from the University of California at Berkeley, an MA (History) and a BSc (Physics) from Madras Christian College.
He began working with State Bank of India in Delhi Circle, then switched after his MBA to consulting with Price Waterhouse in San Francisco.  He left as a Senior Manager in 1988 to join Citibank as M&A Head for India.  From 1992 to 2001, he ran a partnership firm in New Delhi specializing in alliances, strategy, and finance, with major international clients being AT&T, US West, and Fluor Daniel.  A free-lance since 2001 (in San Francisco, Bangkok, and The Hague), he is now based in New Delhi.