Dear all,

I take immense pleasure in (re)introducing Dr. U.B Pavanaja to the entire Wikimedia community! Dr. Pavanaja has joined the Access to Knowledge team at CIS as a consultant from March 4 onward. Those associated with Indian language computing and especially that in Kannada may know him already for having started the first Kannada website: Vishvakannada.com, the first Kannada online magazine, the first Indian language (Kannada) website to receive Golden Web Award, the first Indian language (Kannada) editor for Palm OS and many more firsts.

Dr. Pavanaja holds a Master’s degree from Mysore University and Ph.D. from Mumbai University. He was a scientist at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai, for about 15 years and has done advanced research in Taiwan. He resigned from BARC in 1997 and dedicated himself fully for the cause of Computer and Indian languages. You could read more about his contributions here. Prior to this he has also worked at Microsoft Research Labs and has been a long time contributor to Kannada Wikipedia.

We are very fortunate to have him on board. You can reach him at pavanaja [at] cis-india [dot] org. Please join me in welcoming him to our community :)

Thank you,

Noopur