Dr. Chanekar Prasad Vilas received his undergraduate degree in Mathematics and Computing from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India and an AMIE degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Institution of Engineers, India. He then obtained M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India and the University of Maryland, College Park, USA respectively. He was a Post-Doctoral researcher in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California, San Diego, USA.