Chennai, March 9 (IANS) Downturn or upturn, US corporations pick the best of young Indians. R. Shivaraman, a nanotechnology research scholar here, has been hired by hardware manufacturer Seagate Technology at an annual pay packet of $280,000 (Rs.1.4 crore).

Shivaraman holds an Indian patent jointly with C. Gopalakrishnan, who like him is also with the Nanotechnology Research Centre at the SRM University, for an innovation that enables a hard drive to hold a large amount of data - 30 terabyte (TB) - as against the current storage capacity of 500 gigabyte.

'Patent under the US law is awaited,' Shivaraman told IANS, talking about his innovative 'polymer templated lithography process which allows fabrication of patterned magnetic media with density of around 30 TB'.

According to him, the technology for ultra-high data storage is already available and his innovation scores over others in the time taken to fabricate the hard drives.

'I brought an engineering solution to the problem. Using our technology one can make eight hard drives in a minute,' he said.

Shivaraman plans to join Seagate in December by which time he will get his doctorate in nanotechnology.