The Indian Panorama

Tag: NYU

  • Dr Kavitha P Das is a national DentaQuest award Honoree for 2022

    Dr Kavitha P Das is a national DentaQuest award Honoree for 2022

    • Renee Mehra

    NEW YORK (TIP): Dr. Kavitha P. Das is one of the winners of the national DentaQuest award for 2022. She was selected from a national pool of outstanding candidates to be awarded this prestigious award. She has worked as a health disruptor in the health system for 15 years and focused on interdisciplinary research which can lead to equitable access to care and focused on oral-systemic health connections.

    For this award, DentaQuest selected forward-thinking agents of change, and they created the national Health Equity Hero program eight years ago to celebrate individuals and organizations responsible for extraordinary work that champions equitable access to health care (medical, oral health, behavioral health) and optimal overall health outcomes. Health heroes taking action to transform health systems in their communities in an effort to remedy long-standing disparities.
    Dr. Das is a dentist who is an interdisciplinary health researcher, academic, and healthcare innovator. She has been working in the space of increasing access to care with diverse communities to improve the health and well-being of residents of diverse urban communities which have a predisposition to a number of chronic diseases that have lifetime consequences. She has worked at Columbia University, NYU, Yale University, and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai as an academic and in research. She leads a health equity-focused community-based organization to implement programs to have equitable access to care. Her goal is to change the inevitability of chronic diseases (diabetes, heart disease, oral diseases, and oral cancer) for children and families with a focus on prevention. Das leads unique research projects, public health policy, works with key stakeholders such as academics, school and community leaders, and clergy groups to highlight the opportunity for change, align on what can be done, and create an action plan that builds trust and engagement within the community.

    DentaQuest manages dental and vision benefits for 30 million Americans and provides care directly through a national network of clinics. Their mission is to improve oral health for all Americans, to make it more affordable and easier to have equitable access to care with an emphasis on prevention. They use a multi-pronged approach to revolutionize oral health in ways that make the community healthier. They understand how to align incentives to drive better outcomes and lower costs. They have provided more than $230 million in funding for research and grant programs to advance oral health in communities across the country.

  • Study finds paradoxical relationship between emotions

    Study finds paradoxical relationship between emotions

    A paradoxical relationship between the intensity of emotional expressions and how they are perceived, has been explored by a team of international researchers comprised of scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, New York University, and the Max Planck NYU Center for Language, Music, and Emotion (CLaME).

    Emotions vary in their intensity. A person being attacked by a house cat may well feel fear, but certainly, their fear would be even greater if a lion or tiger were attacking them. So our emotions differ in terms of degrees of strength. But how does this affect our ability to infer meaning from how emotion is expressed? Research on emotion has so far assumed that emotion expressions become more distinct as their intensity increases. But there is little empirical evidence to support this intuitive-sounding idea.

    A team of researchers from Frankfurt am Main and New York has now systematically investigated the role of emotional intensity for the first time. They collected a multitude of nonverbal vocalizations, including screams, laughter, sighs, groans, etc. These sounds all expressed different positive and negative emotions ranging from minimal to maximal emotional intensity. They then examined how listeners perceived these sounds differently depending on the emotional intensity they expressed. The team came to a surprising conclusion: at first, as the intensity of the emotions increased, participants’ ability to judge them also improved, attaining a kind of ‘sweet spot’ in perceiving moderate to strong emotions. When the emotions became maximally intense, however, their legibility decreased quite drastically. Lead author Natalie Holz of the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics explains:

    “Counterintuitively, we found that maximally intense emotions are not the easiest to infer meaning from. In fact, they are the most ambiguous of all.” And the paradox: For extremely intense emotions, neither their individual categories, such as surprise and triumph nor valences, such as pleasantness and unpleasantness, could be distinguished reliably; nor could they be classified as being more positive or negative. Nevertheless, both the intensity itself and the state of arousal were perceived consistently and clearly.

    Holz suggests a reason for this: “At peak intensity, the most vital job might be to detect big events and to assess relevance. A more fine-grained evaluation of affective meaning may be secondary.”

    The research team’s article, just published in the journal Scientific Reports, makes clear that emotional intensity is a dominant factor in the perception of emotion, but in a far more complex way than previously thought. This poses a challenge to prevailing theories of emotion. The study of emotional intensity, and of peak emotions, in particular, can enrich our understanding of the affective experience and how we communicate emotion.

  • Indian American Deven Parekh Nominated by Trump to Key Administration Post

    Indian American Deven Parekh Nominated by Trump to Key Administration Post

    WASHINGTON (TIP): President Donald J. Trump announced his intent to nominate Deven Parekh, of New York, to be a Member of the Board of Directors of the International Development Finance Corporation for a term of three years.

    Deven Parekh is a Managing Director at software investment firm Insight Partners and joined the firm in 2000. Deven manages investments in application software, data, and consumer internet businesses globally. He currently serves as Board Chair for Bullhorn, Appriss, and EveryAction, and he is a member of the Board of Directors for Fanatics, Diligent, 1stdibs, Checkout.com, Episerver, PDI, Community Brands, Vela (formerly SR Labs), Chrono24, Campaign Monitor, Wallapop, FloQast, and Inhabit IQ. He also represents the firm’s interests in Automattic (WordPress), SkyTap, and Zenefits.

    Deven was selected to be on the 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 Forbes Midas list. In 2016, 2018, and 2019 he was selected as a Top 100 Venture Capitalist by CB Insights, and in 2014, was named by AlwaysOn as a Venture Capital 100 winner for his investments in Twitter and Chegg. 

    Deven was previously a Principal at Berenson Minella & Company, a New York based merchant banking firm where he served on the firm’s M&A Committee. Prior to Berenson Minella, Deven was with The Blackstone Group, where he was involved in both M&A advisory and principal activities.
     
    In 2016, Deven was nominated and confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve on the Overseas Private Investment Corporation Board. That agency has since been merged into the new U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, and Deven was re-nominated to serve on the new DFC board in June 2020. From 2010–2012, Deven served as a Member of the Advisory Board of the U.S. Export-Import Bank, the official export credit agent of the United States. He also previously served as a Member of the Technical Advisory Council of the Federal Communications Commission, assisting with developing informed technology policies to support America’s competitiveness and job creation in the global economy.

    Deven currently serves on the Board of Overseers of NYU Langone and is a Member of the Board of the Tisch New York MS Research Center. He has previously served on the Board of Trustees and Executive Committee of the Ethical Culture Fieldston School, and he is Chairman Emeritus of the Board of Publicolor, a New York City based non-profit organization that focuses on inner city schools, which he chaired from 2007 – 2012. In 2006, Deven was named a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute, which seeks to develop the next generation of community spirited leaders. Deven is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations as well as the Economic Club of New York. He received a BS in Economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.