May 3, 2019

Colloquium Topic: Coming to America: Challenges for an Asian-American

This talk is a personal story about the dreams and aspirations of a young scientist coming to America from India in the early 80s.  It illustrates his struggles, successes and failures in a country where cultures inside and outside the workplace are much different from post-colonial India.  Over the last 35 years there has been a significant social and political shift that is affecting the lives of many Asian immigrants who arrived in this country seeking opportunity and a better life for them and their families.  Ramesh plans to share his thoughts and a vision for an integrated and more harmonious relationship between Asian and other cultures in the U.S.

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Colloquium Speaker: Ramesh Varma

Ramesh Varma has a PhD in Physics and he worked at Plessey and ITT/STC in England for eight years before moving to the U.S. in 1984.  He worked at AT&T Bells Labs in Murray Hill and Holmdel, New Jersey where he was a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff and worked on the development of Gallium Arsenide and Indium Phosphide based optical components and packaging for high reliability applications such as undersea optical communication systems.  He moved to Maryland in 2000 and after a short spell at Corvis, joined the Reliability Analysis Lab at Northrop Grumman as Senior Advisor and Consulting Engineer and worked on failure analysis, product qualification and process improvements.  He has 11 patents and over 30 trade secrets and 45 publications. He has volunteered at several organizations over the last 35 years including the Boy Scouts of America for 12 years.  He is currently retired and a volunteer driver at Neighbor Ride, a senior support organization in Howard county.