Pragathi
Background of Core team members
Anand Vridhagiri is a Product Manager at AMD and manages AMD Opteron Processor with worldwide responsibilities. Prior to joining AMD in 2000, he worked at Dell Inc. for 7 years as Global Marketing Manager. Anand has traveled worldwide to engage with customers and help them on their business and technical challenges. He servers the UT Executive MBA Alumni Board as Marketing Director, was Secretary for the Austin Kannada Sangha during 2004-2005 and contributes to voluntary organizations. He has a MBA from UT Austin and MS in Computer Engineering from New Mexico State University. His interests include business strategy, global marketing, and child psychology.
Anu Rao graduated with a Masters in Computer Science from Texas State University. She currently leads an application development group in Agere Systems’s Network Processors division. She has been part of successful startups in Austin such as Dazel Corporation and Agere Systems.
Dr. Prabhudev Konana is an Associate Professor of MIS and distinguished Teaching Professor at the McCombs School of Business, the University of Texas at Austin. He has an MBA and a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona. His teaching and research interests are IT management, outsourcing and offshoring, e-business transformation and growth strategies of India/China. He is a winner of numerous awards including the National Science Foundation CAREER Award and the El Paso Energy Teaching Excellence Award. He is a member of the Academy of Distinguished Teachers at UT-Austin. He has published over 45 papers in journals, magazines and conference proceedings. He serves us associate editor for several journals.
Prasanna Raghavendra: Born and brought up in mysore, India until BE graduation in '89 from SJCE. Came to Texas A&M University for MS Comp Engg in spring '91 and after graduation moved to Austin in '94. Founded Softrends, Inc in 1998 which provides software services to companies especially in the area of Transaction Processing. Currently consulting for the state of texas on a smart card project. Cofounded a non-profit group in 2000 called AKS and help it grow to a 300 people strong org to promote culture and language from the state of karnataka, india. Hobbies - music and running marathons ; create / maintain websites for other non-profit orgs
Ravi Kumar has a B.S in EE and M.S in Computer Science. He has 10 publications, 4 patents and is an IEEE and ASTD member. He manages a team of 25 at Dell. Ravi is very active in the sports area having won many state level gold medals, named the Athlete of the year, and Best all rounder for Mysore University. Ravi is a top level Basket ball player and is very active in coaching kids basketball camps. Ravi has served as Austin Kannada Sangha President during 2004-05.
Satish Rao is a management consultant at IBM. He has held executive level positions at start up companies such as Expeditrix Corporation and Evoke Systems. As a GM at PSW Technologies, he held revenue and delivery responsibilities for a hundred person organization. He has an MBA from UT Austin and MS Computer Science from Texas Tech University.
Dr. Sulatha Dwarakanath got her Ph.D in nucleic acid and protein chemistry at NYU. After working at Bayer Diagnostics, on tests for infectious Diseases, she worked with several startups. Currently she is Research Professor at Texas State University at San Marcos. She founded Nano Science Diagnostics Inc., a nanotechnology based medical diagnostic startup where she is currently CTO. She has raised funds through Venture and Govt. grants. She regularly participates in The race for cure. She has several publications and is an exec. member of CLAS and member of AACC.
