V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai, the inventor of email and other revolutionary innovations, has been passionately interested in science and technology throughout his life. This passion has been earned. Shiva has high honors in the academic and corporate worlds.
It has also given him an opportunity to confront the financial and power dynamics that affect scientific innovation, especially when innovation arises from sources considered outside the mainstream as Shiva, in fact, proudly considers himself to be.
When Shiva’s family immigrated to the United States, those early experiences inspired him to pursue the study of modern systems science and information technology. He has never lost touch with India’s healing traditions, and much of his work has been directed toward integrating the tools and techniques of East and West.
At the age of 14, after completing a special program in computer science at New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Science, Shiva was recruited by the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey as a Research Fellow. His mentor at UMDNJ soon presented Shiva with a difficult but irresistible challenge. Shiva was asked to create an electronic equivalent of the interoffice mail system, in which hard copies of documents were circulated throughout an office environment.
The interoffice mail system was a standard operating procedure in literally millions of companies, hospitals, schools, and other institutions around the world. It was literally everywhere, and in practice, preparing interoffice mail was virtually always tasked to female secretaries or assistants in service of their male bosses and managers.
After writing 50,000 lines of computer code, Shiva introduced the world’s first true email system, incorporating Inbox and Outbox, Folders, Address Book, Memo, and other now-familiar features of every email system. He named the system “EMAIL,” and was awarded the first United States Copyright for “Email, Computer Program for Electronic Mail System.” This legally recognized Shiva as the inventor of email, at a time when Copyright was the only protection for software inventions.
While at MIT, Shiva developed Systems Visualization, a pioneering course integrating systems theory, data, metaphor, and narrative storytelling to enable the visualization of complex systems. After winning a White House competition to automatically analyze and sort President Clinton’s email, Shiva started EchoMail, Inc. which grew to nearly $200 million in market valuation.
He serves as a consultant to CEOs and Executive Management at Fortune 1000 companies, as well as government organizations such as the United States Postal Service, and Office of Inspector General.
Shiva serves as Executive Director of the International Center for Integrative Systems, a nonprofit research and education foundation dedicated to the application of systems thinking across a range of disciplines. Research on Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) is a specific and urgent focus of this foundation. Along these lines, Shiva has met with world leaders including former President Bill Clinton, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, and French President Francois Holland, who have sought his advice on innovative technologies and their applications to food and healthcare systems.
