Professor J. S. Rao, ASME Fellow, is currently Chief Science Officer, Altair Engineering, Bangalore. He is also President of The Vibration Institute of India, and Director on the Board of GMR Energy Group, Bangalore. Dr. Rao obtained his Ph D (1963) and D Sc (1971) from IIT Kharagpur; He has been chairman and BHEL Chair Professor in Mechanical Engineering at IIT Delhi and Visiting Professor at University of Surrey, National Institute of Applied Sciences, Lyon, Concordia University, Rochester Institute of Technology, Technical University, Kassel, National Chung Cheng University, Chia-Yi, The University of New South Wales, Sydney. He has been a Consultant to GTRE, BHEL, ISRO in India, Washington Metro and Stress Technology Inc., in USA and Twyflex Couplings in England, Institute of Fluid Flow Machinery Polish Academy of Sciences, Taipower Company Taipei etc. He successfully led a team of BHEL engineers in investigating the complete catastrophic failure of Narora Atomic Power plant; fixing up annoying squeal problem of Washington Metro trains, identifying failure problems of High pressure compressor rotor failures of Kaveri Engine and advanced design of high speed cryo engines in space application among others. He is a founder member of the IFToMM, member of its executive council and Chairman of its Rotor Dynamics Committee and Permanent Commission on Conferences, member of History of Machines and Mechanisms technical committee, Chief Editor of the journal “Advances in Vibration Engineering”. He authored over 350 research publications and 10 text books, guided 31 students for doctoral degree. He has conducted over 25 short courses on Turbomachine Blade Vibrations and Lifing and Rotor Dynamics and Condition Monitoring, in USA, Germany, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Taiwan, Venezuela, Korea, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Korea and Dubai. He has been honored by several scientific bodies, including Pacific Center of Thermal-Fluids Engineering, Hawaii and The International Federation for Promotion of Mechanism and Machines. Professor Rao is a past president of The Indian Society of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics and elected life time Emeritus Chairman of IFToMM Technical Committee on Rotor Dynamics.