importance of long-term technical careers with sustained focus in one area to attain excellence and to be effective in innovation. Especially in a developing country like India, during his IBM India Chief Scientist assignment as well as at other times, he has often emphasized the need for good technical people to stay technical and not be too attracted by a management career path. In a front-page story back in August 2007, Business Standard, one of India's leading newspapers, discussed Mohan's senior most technical position at IBM and elaborated on his patenting activities. Awards Mohan's research, publications, inventions and technology transfer contributions have been well appreciated both inside and outside IBM over the decades via numerous awards and other recognition. In February 2009, Mohan was elected to the United States National Academy of Engineering (NAE) "for contributions to locking and recovery algorithms for database systems". During the same year, he was also elected as a Foreign Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE). He received the 1996 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) SIGMOD Edgar F. Codd Innovations Award in recognition of his innovative contributions to the development and use of database systems. He was the first non-American and the fifth person ever to receive that award. The first 4 winners in chronological order were Michael Stonebraker, Jim Gray, Phil Bernstein and David DeWitt. Later, the first two won the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Turing Award. In 2002, Mohan was named an ACM Fellow and an IEEE Fellow. At the 1999 International Conference on Very Large Data Bases (VLDB), he was honored with the 10 Year Best Paper Award for the widespread commercial and research impact of his ARIES work which has been widely covered in textbooks and university courses. In 2003, Mohan was named a Distinguished Alumnus of his undergraduate alma mater IIT Madras. In discussing Mohan's accomplishments, that award citation says: "He has played a key role in establishing the foundations of database systems, which are at the core of modern information infrastructure, that support modern society. His work is among the lessons taught to students of database systems across the world. He has won numerous awards and holds key patents. It is rare for the work of one person to have had such a significant research, commercial and societal impact". From IBM, Mohan has received 2 Corporate and 8 Outstanding Innovation/Technical Achievement Awards. He is an