Dr. R. Venkata Rao is currently working as a Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, S.V. National Institute of Technology, Surat, India. He has more than 27 years of teaching and research experience, having completed his B.Tech. in 1988, M.Tech. in 1991, Ph.D. in 2002 and D.Sc. in 2017. Dr. Rao's research interests include: advanced optimization algorithms and their applications to design, thermal and manufacturing engineering, and fuzzy multiple attribute decision-making (MADM) methods and their industrial applications. He has more than 300 research papers to his credit, published in national and international journals and conference proceedings, and has received national and international awards for his research efforts. He is a reviewer for more than 80 national and international journals and serves on the editorial boards of several international journals. Apart from conducting a number of short-term training programs for faculty members and professionalson advanced engineering optimization techniques, he has handled numerous research projects including the bi-lateral projects with Austria, Russia and Slovenia. He also worked as a Visiting Professor at Cracow University of Technology, Poland in January  and November 2016 and at Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand in 2008, 2010, 2015 and 2018. He has authored five books entitled "Decision Making in the Manufacturing Environment Using Graph Theory and Fuzzy Multiple Attribute Decision Making Methods (Volume 1 (2007) and Volume 2 (2013)),""Advanced Modeling and Optimization of Manufacturing Processes: International Research and Development (2010)," "Mechanical Design Optimization Using Advanced Optimization Techniques (2012)" and "Teaching-Learning-Based Optimization Algorithm and Its Engineering Applications (2016)," all of which were published by Springer Verlag, UK.