Shiva Ayyadurai

Dr. V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai, the inventor of email and polymath, holds four degrees from MIT, is a world-renowned systems scientist, and an motivational speaker whose words move his audiences to inspire their infinite possibilities for creativity and innovation. He is a Fulbright Scholar, a Nominnee for the U.S. Presidential the National Medal for Technology and Innovation, Lemelson-MIT Awards Finalist, First Outstanding Scientist and Technologist of Indian Origin (STIO), and a Westinghouse Science Talent Honors Award recipient. In 1978, as a precocious 14-year-old boy, he was accepted to a special program in computer science at New York University, after which he was recruited by the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) as a Research Fellow, where he invented the first email system, when he created an electronic system to replicate the entire interoffice mail system (Inbox, Outbox, Folders, Address Book, Memo, etc.), which he named “email,” defining the email we all know and use today. In 1982, the US government recognized Ayyadurai as the inventor of email by awarding him the first Copyright for “Email” at a time when Copyright was the only way to protect software inventions. His interest in human health, also began early, when as a child, he observed his grandmother, a village farmer and healer, practice Siddha, India’s oldest system of traditional medicine. This motivated his future study and research in systems biology at MIT, leading to his discovery of Systems Health®, a major breakthrough that provides an integrative framework linking eastern and western medicine. His latest invention CytoSolve®, emerging from his doctoral research at MIT, provides a revolutionary platform for modeling complex biological phenomena, to support the development multi-combination medicines without animal testing.