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August 6, 1999

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Indian Firm Wins New Product Award

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Nitish S Rele in Tampa

An Indian American firm in Alachua, Florida has picked the 1999 New Product Award in the small business category by the National Society of Professional Engineers.

Universal Air Technology received the award at the NSPE's annual convention and exposition in Spokane, Washington. Universal Air Technology has developed an innovative new technology called Phototech. "It disinfects and cleans indoor air by photocatalytic oxidation," said company vice president Tushar Goswami.

"It is a revolutionary concept that is effective against indoor air pollutants such as bacteria, viruses, molds, dust mite allergens and odors."

Goswami believes that Phototech will revolutionize indoor cleaning and be a big boon for people suffering from allergies or asthma. "You can buy it for your residence or a commercial building, hospitals, nursing homes, restaurants, smoking areas, etc," he said.

"It is available in standalone portable air purification units or we can install it in the air conditioning unit. And the maintenance is very minimal."

In 1998, Phototech won Florida's 1998 Governor's New Product Award. The technology of disinfecting/detoxifying air was developed by University of Florida Professor Yogi Goswami, who is Tushar's elder brother. Also aiding in the research and development efforts was Sanjeev Hingorani, senior scientist at Universal Air Technology.

"We were extremely excited and happy to receive the NSPE award," said Hingorani. "We had a booth out there and received a tremendous response from the participants to our product."

Tushar Goswami and Hingorani formed their firm in 1996. The research and development center is housed in the Sir Martin Biotechnology Development Institute of the University of Florida.

"The uniqueness of our new technology is that it removes the contaminants and destroys them." And Goswami has several years of experience in the field of air quality. He has mechanical engineering degrees from the University of Delhi and the North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University in Greensboro. He was staff engineer for the oil company Conoco, a product engineer at Pfizer Chemicals, and was a lead mechanical engineer at Ford, Bacon & Davice in Salt Lake City, Utah before he founded Universal Air Technology.

Hingorani has bachelor's, master's and doctorate degrees in mechanical engineering from Punjab Engineering College (Chandigarh), North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University and Auburn University respectively. He has been a trainee engineer at Blue Star in Bombay, a designer engineer at Engineers India Ltd in New Delhi, a research associate at the North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University and also Auburn University.

The NSPE is the only engineering society that represents individual engineering professionals and licensed engineers across all disciplines.

Founded in 1934, the NSPE strengthens the engineering profession by promoting engineering licensure and ethics, enhancing the engineering image, protecting advocating PEs' legal rights at the national and state levels, publishing news of the profession, providing continuing education opportunities.

It serves more than 60,000 members and the public through 54 state and territorial societies and more than 500 chapters.

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