Kakinada, Feb 13th: An Indian-American professor hailing from Kakinada in Andhra Pradesh was among the three people killed when a woman lecturer opened fire during a faculty meeting at a university in Alabama when the faculty decided not to give her tenure. The incident, which also left three people injured, occurred at the University of Alabama at Huntsville. Police identified the Indian-American professor as Gopi Podili, who was the chairman of the biological sciences department. The other two who were killed, Maria Davis and Adriel Johnson, were associate professors of biology. Prof Podili is an alumnus of the Acharya Nagarjuna University near Guntur and was an expert in plant molecular biology and biotechnology.

His father, the late Mr P. Suryaprakasa Rao, worked in the agriculture department and retired from service in 1984. Prof Podilla was the youngest of his four sons. The family owns a house near Sivalayam in Rama Rao Peta, one of the posh areas in Kakinada city. Prof Podili had come home last December to attend the funeral of his father and left for US the same month. His mother, Mrs Ramalakshmi, stays with her third son, Mr. Subrahmanyam, at Guntur. Meanwhile, the Acharya Nagarjuna University registrar, Mr M.V. Narasimha Sharma, said Mr Podili did his post-graduation from the university between 1977 and 1979 and that he was a gold medalist.