Mehra said the conference will also discuss its proposal called Panch Ratnas submitted to the Indian government to revolutionize higher education in the country.

'We presented a white paper titled PanIIT Panch Ratnas to President Pratibha Patil last month, proposing a five-point action plan to make India the global hub for knowledge creation and talent development by 2022. We will debate this in detail in Chicago,'' he said.

Pan-IIT's Panch Ratnas include implementation of wholesale policy reforms in education, quality control and increase capacity, and 'quantum improvement in faculty service conditions, deployment of technology for teaching and collaborative research, and the establishment of an industry-academia interface, according to Mehra.

Other prominent speakers at the summit include James Owens, chairman and CEO of Caterpillar Inc., Sharon Oster, dean of the Yale School of Management, Tulsi Tanti, chairman of Suzlon Energy, Carl Shramm, president and CEO of the Kauffman Foundation, and Prof Raghuram G. Rajan of the University of Chicago and former chief economist of the IMF.

There are said to be an estimated 35,000 IITians in the US.