New Delhi: Indian American oncologist and Pulitzer Prize winner Siddhartha Mukherjee and higher education leader Satish Tripathi have been named by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo as part of a commission that will focus on the city’s economy that has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic.
On Sunday, Cuomo announced that the ‘Blue-Ribbon Commission’ would be chaired by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. The 15-member body will also include the Chair of Rockefeller Foundation Richard Parsons, Ford Foundation President Darren Walker, President of Cornell University Martha Pollack and IBM Chair Ginny Rommetry.
The commission aims to focus on improving broadband access by using innovative technologies.
The New York State has witnessed over 3,61,515 Covid-19 cases and 23,282 deaths so far. Since April, a record 1.2 million unemployment claims have been filed in the city.
“We are at a point financially where we have a $10 (billion) to $15 billion deficit. We have real financial problems right now,” Cuomo had said in April.
Mukherjee, Tripathi and other members of the commission would aim to focus on plans that will jump-start the city’s crippling economy.
ThePrint revisits Mukherjee and Tripathi’s profiles.
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Apart from being a doctor, Mukherjee is also a writer. His book The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, aimed to demystify cancer, had won the Pulitzer in 2011. The book was also listed among Time magazine’s All-Time 100 Nonfiction books.
He also wrote The Gene: An Intimate History in 2016, which explores the history of genetic research and Mukherjee’s own family tree.
Mukherjee studied in Stanford University, the University of Oxford and Harvard Medical School. He is currently an assistant professor of medicine at the Columbia University and a cancer physician.
Satish Tripathi
Tripathi is president of the University of Buffalo, a state university of New York. He graduated from the Banaras Hindu University (BHU) and holds three Master’s degrees — in computer science from the University of Toronto, and two in statistics from University of Alberta and BHU.
He is considered a leader in the national higher education community and serves on the board of directors for the Association of American Universities (AAU) and the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (APLU).
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