1 Year After Putin Invaded Ukraine

War has been a catastrophe for Ukraine and a crisis for the globe. The world is a more unstable and fearful place since Russia invaded its neighbor on Feb. 24, 2022. One year on, thousands of Ukrainian civilians are dead, and countless buildings have been destroyed. Tens of thousands of troops have been killed or seriously wounded on each side. Beyond Ukraine’s borders, the invasion shattered European security, redrew nations’ relations with one another and frayed a tightly woven global economy.

On Feb. 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine—and until that date, the United States had done little to thwart it.  This Friday marks one year since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine. The war has killed thousands, displaced millions, and disrupted global food and energy markets—with no end in sight.  To better understand how this conflict continues to shape geopolitics, and how geopolitics shapes it, Foreign Affairs is publishing an ongoing series of essays about what the war has taught us so far.

The war in Ukraine has touched almost every corner of the world — delivering death and suffering to Ukraine, an energy crisis in Europe, grain shortages in the Middle East and Africa, and compounding inflation across the globe.

“One year later, Kyiv stands. And Ukraine stands. Democracy stands,” the American president said as he stood next to Ukrainian leader Volodomyr Zelensky during his surprise visit to the Ukrainian capital, where life has returned more or less to normal since the initial Russian onslaught.

Inside Russia, all aspects of society and the economy have been warped or reoriented in a sprawling effort to support Vladimir Putin’s war effort.  And while the vast number of casualties have been sustained by Russia and Ukraine, countries from Australia to Zambia have seen their own fighters killed in the war.

While the toll of the war is often described in sweeping statistics — 8 million refugees, 1,000 Russians killed in a day or $500 million in aid — over the past 12 months many groups and individuals have come to symbolize resistance to the war and resilience amid the carnage.

Millions of Ukrainians fled from their homeland in the early days of the war, with mostly women and children leaving their husbands, sons, fathers and brothers to fight the invading forces.

Leading scholars consider why some democracies have not joined the coalition against Russia, why Russian President Vladimir Putin persists despite his disastrous war, what can be learned about contemporary conflict from the battlefields in Ukraine, and more. Start reading below.

NATO was created to prevent a major war in Europe, a task it accomplished well for many decades. Apart from the brief Kosovo war in 1999, its members never had to fight together or coordinate a joint response to aggression—until a year ago, when Russia invaded Ukraine. NATO’s response thus offers fresh, real-world evidence about how contemporary alliances work in practice.  Despite a series of blunders, miscalculations, and battlefield reversals that would have surely seen him thrown out of office in most normal countries, President Vladimir Putin is still at the pinnacle of power in Russia.

He continues to define the contours of his country’s war against Ukraine. He is micromanaging the invasion even as generals beneath him appear to be in charge of the battlefield. (This deputizing is done to protect him from blowback if something goes badly wrong in the war.) Putin and those immediately around him directly work to mobilize Russians on the home front and manipulate public views of the invasion abroad. He has in some ways succeeded in this information warfare.

The war has revealed the full extent of Putin’s personalized political system. After what is now 23 years at the helm of the Russian state, there are no obvious checks on his power. Institutions beyond the Kremlin count for little. “I would never have imagined that I would miss the Politburo,” said Rene Nyberg, the former Finnish ambassador to Moscow. “There is no political organization in Russia that has the power to hold the president and commander in chief accountable.” Diplomats, policymakers, and analysts are stuck in a doom loop—an endless back-and-forth argument among themselves—to figure out what Putin wants and how the West can shape his behavior.

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on Tuesday that his country would suspend its participation in the New START agreement with the United States, throwing into question the future of the last remaining arms control accord between the world’s two largest nuclear powers. The treaty, which came into force in 2011, places limits on the number of intercontinental nuclear weapons that each country can have and was extended for an additional five years in 2021. Arms control had long been regarded as the last redoubt of constructive collaboration between Washington and Moscow.

Putin showed no signs of backing down as he used his annual state-of-the-nation address to rail against the United States and accuse Ukraine and the West of provoking the war days before the first anniversary of the Russian invasion. “They want to inflict a ‘strategic defeat’ on us and try to get to our nuclear facilities at the same time,” Putin said during his nearly 100-minute speech, which was met with applause from Russian lawmakers and senior officials. “In this context, I have to declare today that Russia is suspending its participation in the Treaty on Strategic Offensive Arms.”

President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday delivered a nuclear warning to the West over Ukraine, suspending a bilateral nuclear arms control treaty, announcing new strategic systems had been put on combat duty and warning that Moscow could resume nuclear tests.

Speaking nearly a year to the day since ordering an invasion that has triggered the biggest confrontation with the West since the depths of the Cold War, Putin said Russia would achieve its war aims and accused the West of trying to destroy Russia.

Cautioning the United States that it was stoking the war into a global conflict, Putin said that Russia was suspending participation in the New START Treaty, the last major arms control treaty between Moscow and Washington.

Responding to Putin’s announcement, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said, “With today’s decision on New START, the whole arms control architecture has been dismantled.”

Experts said it’s too soon to interpret Putin’s remarks as heralding a new nuclear arms race, but with the treaty set to expire in 2026, the Russian leader’s announcement will further complicate diplomatic efforts to extend or negotiate a new treaty between the United States and Russia, which together hold about 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons.

The biggest blow to democracy on a global scale was not the war itself but the fact that—despite all “never again” claims—European and Western countries in general agreed and accepted beforehand that another European nation might be deprived of its sovereignty, freedom, and independent institutions, and it might find itself militarily occupied. (If this isn’t how they felt, then they wouldn’t have evacuated their embassies in Kyiv.) President Biden vowed on Tuesday that the United States would “not tire” in its support of Ukraine, describing the American commitment to NATO and Ukraine as a battle for freedom against autocracy in a speech delivered just hours after President Vladimir V. Putin presented a radically different account of the war.

In his national address, Mr. Putin showed no sign that he would change course, instead signaling that Russians should prepare for a long war ahead. He accused the West of a “totalitarian” project to control the world under the guise of spreading liberal values, and declared Russia was suspending the one remaining nuclear arms treaty with the United States.

“They intend to transform a local conflict into a phase of global confrontation. This is exactly how we understand it all and we will react accordingly, because in this case we are talking about the existence of our country.” Defeating Russia, he said, was impossible.

Why Has India Not Condemned Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine?

In the year since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Western democracies have condemned Moscow, slapped wide-ranging sanctions on it, cut back on Russian oil and gas and sent unprecedented amounts of arms and ammunition to help Ukraine defend itself.

But the world’s biggest democracy — India — hasn’t done any of that.

India has solidified ties with Moscow. Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with Vladimir Putin in September and called their countries’ friendship “unbreakable.” He did tell the Russian president it’s “not a time for war.” But a year on, Modi still refuses to assign blame for the violence, and has voiced more concern over the spike in global food and fuel prices triggered by the war.

Meanwhile, as Europe eschews Russian oil and gas, India has doubled down on buying Russian oil at bargain prices — much to Washington’s chagrin. And India continues to place orders for Russian-made weapons.

All this is a reminder that, a year into this war, condemnation of Russia is far from unanimous. Much of the global south actually sees the West’s focus on Ukraine as a distraction from other, more pressing issues like food security, inflation and mounting debt.

Analysts and political scientists cite four main factors shaping India’s policy toward Ukraine and Russia: History, energy, arms and influence.

Factor #1: The India-Russia relationship goes way back

India was still under British colonial rule when Russia opened its first consulate there in 1900, in Mumbai. But relations really took off during the Cold War.

Picture : Politico

“It started out as strategic sympathy for the Soviet Union, in the backdrop of India getting independence from the British. So it’s an anti-colonial experience, anti-imperialism,” says Rajeswari (Raji) Pillai Rajagopalan, a political scientist at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi. “And as the Cold War picked up, it became a more anti-West, anti-U.S. sentiment they shared.”

The end of the Cold War didn’t change that. Neither has the Ukraine war. India’s nationalist TV news channels often accuse the United States — rather than Russia — of doing more to ruin Ukraine.

In November, Modi’s top diplomat, S. Jaishankar, traveled to Moscow, where he stood alongside his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov and called their countries’ relationship “steady and time-tested.”

Modi has called for a cease-fire in Ukraine, without condemning Russia’s attacks. Some of his political opponents say that doesn’t go far enough, and point toward India’s actions rather than its words.

“The actions that India is engaged in so far do not reflect any remorse or even mild criticism of the events in Ukraine,” says Praveen Chakravarty, a political economist affiliated with the opposition Indian National Congress party. “If anything, it seems to aid and abet.”

Factor #2: India wants cheap Russian oil

India has one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. (The IMF forecasts 6.8% growth for India this year, compared to just 1.6% for the United States.) By 2030, India is forecast to be the third-largest economy in the world, behind the U.S. and China.

It’s already the third-largest oil consumer in the world. And it needs even more to fuel all that growth. But because India has few oil and gas reserves of its own, most of the oil it needs has to be imported. It’s also a relatively poor country, particularly sensitive to price.

That’s where Russia comes in. India still buys more oil from Middle Eastern countries than Russia. But its Russian share has skyrocketed. In December, India imported 1.2 million barrels of Russian crude. That’s a whopping 33 times more than a year earlier. In January, the share of Russian crude rose to 28% of India’s oil imports — up from just 0.2% before Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Indian officials have defended those purchases by saying it’s their job to find bargains for their citizens. And Jaishankar, the foreign minister, has suggested it’s hypocritical of wealthier Westerners to ask them not to.

“Europe has managed to reduce its imports [of Russian gas] while doing it in a manner that is comfortable,” Jaishankar told an Austrian TV channel last month. “At 60,000 euros or whatever is your per capita income, you’re so caring about your population. I have a population at 2,000 dollars [per capita annual income]. I also need energy, and I am not in a position to pay high prices for oil.”

Last April, Jaishankar visited the White House for a virtual summit between Modi and President Biden. There, U.S. officials told their Indian counterparts they understand India’s energy needs and were hoping only that India would not “accelerate” Russian oil purchases.

India basically ignored that. But the Biden administration now says it’s actually fine with that.

Earlier this month, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Resources Geoffery Pyatt said Washington is “comfortable” with India’s approach on Russian oil. And Karen Donfried, the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs, said the U.S. is not looking at sanctioning India for this.

Here’s one possible explanation for Washington’s change of heart: India is buying Russian crude at deep discounts — something the West can’t do because of sanctions, or doesn’t want to do because of the optics. Then India refines that same Russian oil and exports it onward to the U.S. and Europe. So the West gets Russian oil, without getting its hands dirty.

“U.S. treasury officials have two main goals: keep the market well supplied and deprive Russia of oil revenue,” Ben Cahill, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, recently told Bloomberg. “They are aware that Indian and Chinese refiners can earn bigger margins by buying discounted Russian crude and exporting products at market prices. They’re fine with that.”

Factor #3: Moscow is India’s biggest arms dealer

India’s military has historically been equipped with Russian and Soviet weapons. Most of those contracts date back to the Cold War, a conflict in which India was officially non-aligned but close to Moscow. So most of India’s arsenal was — and still is — Soviet-made.

By now, some those 30-something-year-old weapons are deteriorating. “Let’s just go to the [Indian] Air Force. Most of those Sukhois and MiGs [fighter aircraft] are referred to as ‘flying coffins.’ Very often Indian pilots die when they are testing, or flying, those,” says Aparna Pande, a political scientist at the Hudson Institute in Washington. “So India knows they need to be replaced.”

Indian defence experts may have been the only ones not surprised to see Russian tanks falling apart in Ukraine this past year, Pande says. They’ve been unhappy with Russian equipment for years.

So the Indian government has started replacing some of its Soviet-made aircraft and artillery with French, Israeli and American versions. But it’s a time-consuming and costly task to update India’s entire arsenal, Pande notes.

“Let’s say my entire apartment had only IKEA furniture, and now I decide, ‘OK now I want to change it, and I want West Elm.’ I cannot just replace one chair. I have to change my entire dining table and all the chairs,” Pande explains. “So what India has done [in terms of updating its weapons] is piecemeal. But those big ticket items are still Russian-made. So that’s the change which has to happen, and this is what will reduce the Russian influence.”

Despite the Indian government’s efforts to diversify, Moscow continues to be India’s biggest arms dealer — more than 30 years after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Russia has reportedly supplied India with around $13 billion in weapons in the past five years alone. There’s one big reason India needs all these weapons: China.

Factor #4: India wants to prevent Putin from getting closer to China’s Xi Jinping

India’s biggest foreign policy preoccupation is not Ukraine or Russia. It’s China. The two countries share a more than 2,000-mile disputed border. Satellite imagery shows China may be encroaching on Indian territory. Soldiers clashed there in June 2020, and again this past December.

And as the West isolates Russia, India fears Putin is already looking eastward, toward Beijing. “You’re already seeing a very close Russia-China relationship emerging, even in the last few years,” says the ORF’s Rajagopalan. “So the current Indian approach is, we don’t want Russia to go completely into the Chinese fold. Because for India, China has become the No. 1 national security threat.”

Despite the Ukraine war, that’s true for Washington too. So even if Washington doesn’t like it, Biden administration officials say they understand why India has not condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and they’re willing to grant India a wide berth.

They may even see India’s continued ties with Putin as useful — to try to mitigate just how far the Ukraine war drives him into Xi Jinping’s arms.

AAPI Plans 41st Annual Convention in Philadelphia

(Philadelphia, PA; February 8, 2023) “It is with great pleasure that we announce that the 41st Annual Convention and Scientific Sessions organized by American Association of Physicians of Indian origin (AAPI) will be held from July 6th to 9th, 2003 in the historical city of Philadelphia, PA,” Dr. Ravi Kolli, President of AAPI announced here today.

Highlighting the importance of AAPI and the contributions of AAPI members in the United states, Dr. Kolli, a senior Psychiatrist by profession said, “Today, AAPI is strong representing over 120,000 Indian American physicians, 130 local Chapters, who make up of 10% of total physicians in the US and nearly 50% of International Medical Graduates, rooted in every corner of the nation, who serve every 7th patient in the US. We are proud of our achievements and our contributions to the healthcare industry and the millions of people we serve.”

“We invite you to the 41st Annual Convention in the historic city of Philadelphia, PA,” Dr. Sanjay Gupta Convenor of AAPI Convention 2023 said. “We have convened a fantastic group of people to meet the needs of the convention and are very excited about this great event. Please reach out to any one of the representatives from the Philadelphia Host Team with questions or comments.”

Picture : TheUNN

“The 2023 AAPI Annual Convention & Scientific Assembly offers an exciting venue to interact with leading physicians, health professionals, academicians, and scientists of Indian origin,” said Dr. V. Ranga, Chair of AAPI BOT. “Physicians and healthcare professionals from across the country will convene and participate in the scholarly exchange of medical advances, to develop health policy agendas, and to encourage legislative priorities in the coming year. We look forward to seeing you in Philadelphia.”

The Covid pandemic has impacted all aspects of human life as never been before. The past three years have been challenging to everyone, particularly to those who are assigned with the responsibility of caring for the sick, even as hundreds of millions are affected by the pandemic. Physicians and other health professionals on the front lines of COVID-19 care have experienced so many unknowns during the pandemic. They’ve also put their own health and the well-being of their families on the line to provide care.

“At this critical juncture in human history, AAPI, the largest ethnic medical organization in the country is focusing on themes such as how to take care of self and find satisfaction and happiness in the challenging situations they are in, while serving hundreds of patients everyday of their dedicated and noble profession,” Dr. Anjana Samadder, President-Elect of AAPI said.

Describing the importance of the host city, Dr. Satheesh Kathula, Vice President of AAPI pointed out, “Philadelphia is one of the most exciting, urban chic cities in the world. It is one of the leading regions for the Life Sciences, Energy, and Financial Services industries. Philly is home to the University of Pennsylvania and has 9 medical schools in the surrounding area will bring in many more participants and excellent world-class speakers.”

Pointing to the accessibility and convenience of reaching Philly, Dr. Meher Medavaram, Secretary of AAPI said, “Traveling to Philadelphia is only one hour and 20 minutes from New York City and 1 hour and 45 minutes from Washington, D.C. via Amtrak’s Acela Express line. Thirty airlines serve Philadelphia International Airport with 625 daily nonstop flights to 121 domestic destinations and will attract many attendees.”

Dr. Sumul Rawal, Treasurer of AAPI said, “Exhibitors and Corporate Partners will remain our top priority as we work together to provide a world-class forum for increased interactions between sponsors, exhibitors, and attendees. The ease with which attendees can move between the exhibit hall, conference and ballrooms, and their hotel rooms will ensure maximum attendance and visibility for Sponsors and Exhibitors.”

The American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin Convention offers an exciting venue to interact with leading physicians, health professionals, academicians, and scientists of Indian origin. The physicians and healthcare professionals from across the country will convene and participate in the scholarly exchange of medical advances, to develop health policy agendas, and to encourage legislative priorities in the coming year.

While urging all AAPI members to make plans and be part of the historic Convention, Dr. Kolli said: “We have a wonderful team planning and organizing the event to make the 2023 annual convention a memorable experience. Please reach out to any one of the representatives from the Philly team for any of your queries.” Please visit www.aapiconvention.org for more details or call the AAPI office at (630) 990 2277 for further information.

Can America Stop India’s Anti-Christian Crusade In Its Tracks

(Global Christian Relief) — The world’s largest democracy should be protecting the religious rights of all of its people. On Jan. 2, a mob of about 1,000 extremists — men and women, young and old — armed with rocks, wooden sticks and iron rods viciously attacked Sacred Heart Church in central India’s Narayanpur district. While this kind of anti-Christian violence may be shocking, it’s not altogether surprising. Attacks against Christians in India have been steadily rising for years, jumping 81% from 2020 to 2021 alone.

Picture : RNS

The mob in this case was reportedly protesting “illegal” conversions and church construction, but this was no mere protest. Videos captured by one of Global Christian Relief’s partners show the crowd throwing rocks and bashing in windows of the church building and church vehicles. Police officers are seen standing by and even falling back as they allowed the frenzied mob to vandalize the church. Footage of the aftermath shows a destroyed Nativity, broken chairs and scattered debris.

Stories like these have become sadly routine since 2014, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party rose to power. They have stoked attacks on Muslim and Christian minorities and spread their radical Hindutva ideology, claiming that being truly Indian means being Hindu. Reported incidents of violence against Christians have risen more than 220%.

The Modi regime has spent massive amounts of money to plant lobbyists in Washington to help hide the truth. As a result, you likely won’t hear this story inside the Beltway. American lawmakers are discouraged from confronting the truth because India is an important ally of the U.S. in South Asia. But Americans deserve to know it.

Publicly, the U.S. government has mysteriously remained silent about the events at Sacred Heart Church. Its lack of response to this horrific incident speaks volumes about our priorities. America currently does $102.3 billion in trade with India annually, and our economy would be negatively impacted if we fell out of India’s good graces. But will America be held hostage by economic power plays?

The Sacred Heart incident is only one sign of a larger problem. The Indian government has adopted anti-conversion laws and policies in more than 10 states, preventing people from choosing their own faith. These measures are leveraged by those in power to discriminate against religious minorities. This is not only in opposition to what we believe in America but is also in direct conflict with Article 25 of India’s own constitution: “ … all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practice and propagate religion.”

Media coverage of stories like Sacred Heart in India, which is scarce, also shows how Modi’s regime squashes stories of persecution. Only a handful of local outlets reported that five people were arrested that day. Since Modi’s rise to power, the Indian government has shut down news stations midbroadcast and has pressured advertisers as part of a wider assault on dissent. On Reporters Without Borders’ 2022 Press Freedom Index, India fell to 150th out of 180 countries—a journalistic crisis in “the world’s largest democracy.”

With Modi’s lobbyists deterring members of Congress from taking critical positions on India, using tactics such as intimidation and the spread of misinformation, the White House and State Department must hold the government of our largest trade partner accountable. We must demand that India uphold freedom of religion for all its citizens. It’s difficult to do business with people you can’t trust and don’t share common ideals with, especially if you don’t believe they provide basic human rights.

We have much common ground with India but cannot ignore its continued stunning slide into illiberal and radical religious intolerance. (David Curry is president and CEO of Global Christian Relief, America’s leading watchdog organization focused on the plight of persecuted Christians worldwide. In addition to equipping the Western church to advocate and pray for the persecuted, GCR works in the most restrictive countries to protect and encourage Christians threatened by faith-based discrimination and violence.

The above story was published in: Religion News Service.

(The views expressed in this sponsored commentary do not necessarily reflect those of www.theunn.com.)

Hubble Captures The Start Of A New Spoke Season At Saturn

Newswise — New images of Saturn from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope herald the start of the planet’s “spoke season” surrounding its equinox, when enigmatic features appear across its rings. The cause of the spokes, as well as their seasonal variability, has yet to be fully explained by planetary scientists.

Like Earth, Saturn is tilted on its axis and therefore has four seasons, though because of Saturn’s much larger orbit, each season lasts approximately seven Earth years. Equinox occurs when the rings are tilted edge-on to the Sun. The spokes disappear when it is near summer or winter solstice on Saturn. (When the Sun appears to reach either its highest or lowest latitude in the northern or southern hemisphere of a planet.) As the autumnal equinox of Saturn’s northern hemisphere on May 6, 2025, draws near, the spokes are expected to become increasingly prominent and observable.

The suspected culprit for the spokes is the planet’s variable magnetic field. Planetary magnetic fields interact with the solar wind, creating an electrically charged environment (on Earth, when those charged particles hit the atmosphere this is visible in the northern hemisphere as the aurora borealis, or northern lights). Scientists think that the smallest, dust-sized icy ring particles can become charged as well, which temporarily levitates those particles above the rest of the larger icy particles and boulders in the rings.

The ring spokes were first observed by NASA’s Voyager mission in the early 1980s. The transient, mysterious features can appear dark or light depending on the illumination and viewing angles.

“Thanks to Hubble’s OPAL program, which is building an archive of data on the outer solar system planets, we will have longer dedicated time to study Saturn’s spokes this season than ever before,” said NASA senior planetary scientist Amy Simon, head of the Hubble Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) program.

Saturn’s last equinox occurred in 2009, while NASA’s Cassini spacecraft was orbiting the gas giant planet for close-up reconnaissance. With Cassini’s mission completed in 2017, and the Voyager spacecrafts long gone, Hubble is continuing the work of long-term monitoring of changes on Saturn and the other outer planets.

“Despite years of excellent observations by the Cassini mission, the precise beginning and duration of the spoke season is still unpredictable, rather like predicting the first storm during hurricane season,” Simon said.

While our solar system’s other three gas giant planets also have ring systems, nothing compares to Saturn’s prominent rings, making them a laboratory for studying spoke phenomena. Whether spokes could or do occur at other ringed planets is currently unknown. “It’s a fascinating magic trick of nature we only see on Saturn —for now at least,” Simon said.

Hubble’s OPAL program will add both visual and spectroscopic data, in wavelengths of light from ultraviolet to near-infrared, to the archive of Cassini observations. Scientists are anticipating putting these pieces together to get a more complete picture of the spoke phenomenon, and what it reveals about ring physics in general.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, in Washington, D.C.

For image and animation files and more information about Saturn’s ring spokes and Hubble, visit:

https://hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2023/news-2023-005. http://www.nasa.gov/hubble

Dr. Bellamkonda Kishore & Dr. Wade Fallin Named 2023 National Academy Of Inventors Senior Members

University of Utah Health professors Thomas (Wade) Fallin and Bellamkonda Kishore, M.D., Ph.D., have been named Senior Members by the National Academy of Inventors (NAI). They are part of the 2023 class of Senior Members made up of 95 of the foremost emerging academic inventors identified by NAI’s Member Institutions.

Fallin and Kishore join Ashutosh Tiwari, Ph.D., an engineering professor at the U, as the university’s three NAI Senior Members. Tiwari was elected in 2021. NAI Senior Members are active faculty, scientists, and administrators from NAI Member Institutions who have demonstrated remarkable innovation producing technologies that have brought, or aspire to bring, real impact on the welfare of society. They also have growing success in patents, licensing, and commercialization, while educating and mentoring the next generation of inventors.

Bellamkonda Kishore

Kishore, an adjunct professor of internal medicine (nephrology), has researched physiology, pathophysiology, and experimental therapeutics of the kidney, obesity, and related systems for 40 years. His career has spanned the globe from India and Japan to Belgium and the United States, including four years at the intramural research program of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, and two decades as faculty in the Department of Internal Medicine at University of Utah Health and principal investigator in the Department of Veterans Affairs Salt Lake City Health Care System.

Recently, Kishore’s career branched off to a new path—entrepreneurship. In addition to his adjunct position at the U, he is the CEO, president, co-founder, and CSO of ePurines, a startup located in the U’s Research Park. Kishore’s patented technologies—commercialized through ePurines—offer innovative purinergic signaling-based therapies for obesity, metabolic syndrome, and a variety of kidney, liver, heart, and lung diseases with a target patient population of 500 million to 1 billion globally.

When Kishore graduated from medical school in 1976, he spent barely six months practicing medicine before deciding to return to medical school to research the kidney. “That was a very tough decision because you’re leaving a bright and secure future,” he said. “But my heart was in the science from the beginning, and somehow I could not be happy sitting in the clinic and looking at patients.”

Being named an NAI Senior Member is “a rewarding recognition” that his choice to continue his research was correct. “It is a culmination of 40 years of my research life,” said Kishore, who believes that a passionate, purpose-oriented life is far superior to an ambitious, success-driven life.

Wade Fallin

Fallin, an orthopaedics research professor and Louis S. Peery, M.D. Orthopaedic Innovation Center (LSP OIC) executive director, has started and sold five companies in the medical device industry with a focus on the orthopaedics and spine markets and holds over 250 issued U.S. patents.

Picture : TheUNN

“My entire career focus has been on innovating new medical device technologies that reduce pain and suffering resulting from injury or disease,” Fallin said. “In addition to being a ‘serial entrepreneur,’ I have been fortunate to have the opportunity to be a ‘serial innovator,’ which has led to over a dozen commercial orthopaedic surgical systems that are in clinical use around the world today.”

The LSP OIC and Fallin, with his history as an entrepreneur combined with his experience at the U starting in 2019, are excellent resources to U faculty members and students looking to “understand the process of translating from early-stage ideas to something that’s clinically and commercially successful for medical devices,” Fallin said.

“The National Academy of Inventors fosters innovation in academic settings,” Fallin said. “Their membership works to increase the level of innovation at universities, so being part of that is really appealing to me.”

This latest class of NAI Senior Members, the largest to date, demonstrates a shared commitment to celebrating the diversity of the academic ecosystem, with 48 outstanding female and/or minority academic inventors included. Hailing from 50 NAI member institutions and research universities across the nation, this impressive class are named inventors on more than 1,200 issued U.S. patents, with many of those being licensed and commercialized.

“I’m delighted to see how this program has expanded in just a couple years’ time,” said Paul R. Sanberg, FNAI, NAI president. “It really reflects the shift we are seeing at universities where invention is not only being recognized but prioritized as well.”

The 2023 class of Senior Members will be celebrated at NAI’s Annual Meeting, Diversifying Innovation for a Strong Economy and a Sustainable Future, taking place June 25-27, 2023, in Washington, D.C.

University of Utah Health  provides leading-edge and compassionate care for a referral area that encompasses Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, and much of Nevada. The National Academy of Inventors is a member organization comprising U.S. and international universities, and governmental and non-profit research institutes, with over 4,000 individual inventor members and Fellows spanning more than 250 institutions worldwide

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