Obama names yet another Indian American to key post

Desai, a lawyer and a Chinese studies expert, will join as Member, Foreign Claims Settlement Commission.

Desai, an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin Law School, is the sixth Indian American to be named to a top administration job this year alone. Obama has more Indian Americans serving in high places than any other previous US administration.

Announcing his intent to nominate Desai with five other individuals to key administration posts, Obama said, "I am grateful that these talented and dedicated individuals have agreed to take on these important roles and devote their talents to serving the American people.

"I look forward to working with them in the coming months and years."

Desai has also taught as a Visiting Professor at the Johns Hopkins University-Nanjing University Centre for Chinese and American Studies in Nanjing, China, the National Taiwan University in Taipei, Taiwan, and the National Tsing Hua University in Hsinchu, Taiwan.

Before joining the University of Wisconsin faculty in 2001, he practiced law at Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, the White House said.

Previously, Desai served as a law clerk to the American arbitrators at the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal in The Hague, The Netherlands.

He also clerked for Judge Louis F Oberdorfer of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia and Judge David S Tatel of the United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.

Desai worked briefly in the Legal Adviser's Office at the US Department of State and at the Legal Resources Centre in Grahamstown, South Africa.

He holds an AB in Mathematics from Harvard University, where he was awarded a Henry Russell Shaw Fellowship, an MA in International Affairs from Columbia University, and a JD from the University of California, Berkeley (Boalt Hall) School of Law, where he was editor-in-chief of the California Law Review.

Recent Indian American appointees include Geeta Pasi, a career foreign service official who once served in New Delhi, as US ambassador to the Republic of Djibouti, and Nisha Desai Biswal, Assistant Administrator for Asia at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), who will also serve on the Congressional-Executive Commission on China.

Earlier, Deepa Gupta was named as a member of National Council on the Arts, Vivek Murthy to an Advisory Group on Prevention, Health Promotion and Integrative and Public Health and agricultural scientist Islam A Siddiqui was re-nominated as chief agricultural negotiator in trade talks.