About Me

I am originally from New Delhi, India. I obtained my bachelors degree in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi in 1986.  I joined the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 1986 where I got my masters degree (1987) as well as my doctoral degree (1992) in chemical engineering. I started my academic career at  Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida as an Assistant Professor in 1992 and got promoted to Associate Professor in 1997 and Full Professor in 2003. In 2007, I moved to the University of South Alabama in Mobile, Alabama as Professor and Department Chair. In 2015, I moved to Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas where I served as Dean of Engineering until 2018 and Associate Provost of Research and Sponsored Programs until 2019. From 2019 to 2021, I was the Regional Director for TMAC-Southeast, a federally funded research center at Lamar University. In 2021, I joined West Virginia University as the Chair of the Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering .

Four generations from my family have doctoral degrees. My grandfather got his Ph.D. in economics from the London School of Economics (1943), my father got his Ph.D. in civil engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (1975), I got my Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Michigan (1992), and my son got his Ph.D. in bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania (2024). 

I love to travel and have visited 50 countries.