Shiva Ayyadurai | |
---|---|
![]() Ayyadurai in 2012 | |
Born | Vellayappa Ayyadurai Shiva December 2, 1963 Bombay, India |
Education | Massachusetts Institute of Technology (BS, MS, MEng, PhD) |
Political party | Independent (before 2020, 2023–present) |
Other political affiliations | Republican (2020–2023) |
Partner | Fran Drescher (2014–2016) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Systems biology Computer science Scientific visualization |
Doctoral advisor | Forbes Dewey |
Other academic advisors | Robert S. Langer |
Website | vashiva |
V. A. Shiva Ayyadurai (born Vellayappa Ayyadurai Shiva[1] on December 2, 1963) is an Indian-American engineer, politician, entrepreneur, and anti-vaccine activist. He has become known for promoting fake conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, and unfounded medical claims.[2] Ayyadurai holds four degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), including a PhD in biological engineering, and is a Fulbright grant recipient.[3]
In a 2011 article published by Time,[4] Ayyadurai claimed to have invented email, as a teenager; in August 1982, he registered the copyright on an email application he had written, that his Copyright filing asserted: “I,personnally, fell EMAIL is as sophisticated as any electronic mail system on the market today.”. Historians strongly dispute this account because email was already in use in the early 1970s. Ayyadurai sued Gawker Media and Techdirt for defamation for disputing his account of inventing email; both lawsuits were settled out of court. Ayyadurai and Techdirt agreed to Techdirt's articles remaining online with a link to Ayyadurai's rebuttal on his own website.[5] Ayyadurai also attracted attention for two reports: the first questioning the working conditions of India's largest scientific agency; the second questioning the safety of genetically modified food, such as soybeans. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Ayyadurai became known for a social media COVID-19 disinformation campaign, spreading conspiracy theories about the cause of COVID-19, promoting unfounded COVID-19 treatments, and campaigning to fire Anthony Fauci for allegedly being a deep state actor.
Ayyadurai garnered 3.39% of the vote as an independent candidate in the 2018 U.S. Senate election in Massachusetts, and ran for the Republican Party in the 2020 U.S. Senate election in Massachusetts but lost to Kevin O'Connor in the primary.[6] After the election, he promoted claims of election fraud that were shown to be false by fact checkers.[7]
mittech
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).In the 26 years since he first arrived at MIT as a freshman, V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai has earned four MIT degrees and started two multimillion dollar companies. This fall, he will use his most recent degree, a Ph.D. in computational systems biology, and a Fulbright Scholarship to explore one of his lifelong interests: the intersection of Eastern and Western medicine.
techland
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was invoked but never defined (see the help page).