Praveen Chaudhari

Who was Praveen Chaudhari?

Dr. Praveen Chaudhari was an Indian American physicist born in Ludhiana, India who migrated to the United States in 1961 and contributed to the field of material physics.

Chaudhari was employed by IBM's Research Division, headquartered at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York after coming to the United States. Praveen researched the structure and properties of amorphous solids, defects in solids, mechanical properties of thin films, superconductivity, quantum transport in disordered systems, liquid crystal alignment on substrates, and the magnetic monopole experiment.

His career with IBM lasted 36 years during which he was appointed Director and later Vice President of science in 1981 and 1982, until he stepped down as director of Brookhaven National Laboratory in 2006 citing his wish to continue with the laboratory as part-time, following President George W. Bush's allowance for increased funding to the department in his budget. Chaudhari had been hailed for successfully navigating BNL through a series of significant funding challenges. In his official statement he had cited his decision that "The laboratory is in very good shape and I feel it is time for me to make a change: to spend more time at home and to take advantage of the wonderful opportunities to do science at BNL."