The Donald Trump administration has named an Indian-American, Dr Vivek Lall (49), an aerospace scientist, to a key federal aviation advisory committee which provides guidance to the US government on the future of airspace system. Son of a late Indian diplomat, Lall has been appointed for a two-year term on the committee. Currently, Lall is a vice-president at Lockheed Martin. Earlier, he has been a top official at Boeing and General Atomics. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has met him in Washington DC. Lall has been instrumental in getting breakthroughs for global US defence companies and the US establishment and successfully led over $12 billion of US-India trade.

Speaking to The Sunday Guardian, Lall said, “It is a great honour for me. I would be representing the viewpoints of defence technology organisations in the NextGen Advisory Committee of the Department of Transportation.”

“The committee advises the American government on issues including, but not limited to, NextGen investment priorities, capability deployment timing, equipage incentives, specific technologies, and deployments such as DataComm, National airspace system performance metrics, and airspace design initiatives,” said Lall, who presently resides in the US with wife, Shiva, and two children. He can speak five languages, including French, German and Swahili. Lall is known among the Asia Pacific and US defence and political establishments as the “most influential Asian American” in US defence industry. Before getting into aviation, he was trained as a private pilot in the US. He is a mechanical and aeronautical engineer. Cambridge (UK) listed him as one of only 2,000 “outstanding scientists” of the 20th Century.

During his stint in India, Lall was chairman of the Indo-American Strategic Dialogue and also an advisor to the UN affiliates on cyber security and broadband issues. He worked as India Country Head, Boeing Defence Space and Security in May 2007 and earlier as Managing Director of Boeing Commercial Airplanes from 2003 to 2007. Before returning to America, Lall was appointed as president and CEO at Reliance Industries Limited to spearhead growth in new ventures (aerospace and homeland security) in 2011, and worked closely with Mukesh Ambani.