Sam Pitroda is an internationally respected development thinker, policy maker, telecom inventor and entrepreneur, who has spent over four decades in Information and Communications Technology and related human and national development initiatives. He is credited with having laid the foundation of India's technology and telecommunications revolution in the 1980s and was Chairman of India's National Knowledge Commission (2005-2009). He is currently Adviser to the Prime Minister of India on Public Information Infrastructure and Innovations and is Chairman of the Expert Committee on the use of ICT in Railways. He is also the Chairman of the Smart Grid Task Force set up under the aegis of the Ministry of Power, Government of India. He has recently been appointed the founding Commissioner of the United Nations Broadband Commission for Digital Development. He holds close to 100 worldwide patents and has published and lectured widely in the US, Europe, Latin America and Asia.