Pulling off the Paulson rescue act to everyone’s satisfaction will keep his hands full in coming weeks and months, but Kashkari has actively worked on matters relating to India in his treasury stint till date.

For the Indo-US bilateral investment treaty that has been under discussion for a while now, he was one of the key US negotiators.

At his confirmation hearing, Kashkari had told the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs that since joining the treasury in July 2006, he had led several policy initiatives, including “promoting Indian financial sector liberalisation and free trade through strengthened economic engagement and increased infrastructure investment.”

The Akron, Ohio-born Kashkari, originally hails from Kashmir. His father, Chaman Kashkari, is a retired professor of engineering at the University of Akron while mother Sheila is a pathologist.

Kashkari is an alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, where he received his MBA in finance. He has also earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

He has worked as R&D Principal Investigator at TRW in Redondo Beach, California, where he developed technology for NASA space science missions. He went to Wharton after this stint.