Thalappil Pradeep is an Institute Professor, the Deepak Parekh Institute Chair Professor and a Professor of Chemistry at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, India. He studied at the University of Calicut, Indian Institute of Science, UC Berkeley, and Purdue. His research interests are in molecular and nanoscale materials. He is an author of over 525 papers in journals and is an inventor of over 100 patents or patent applications. In addition to the work on advanced materials, he is involved in the development of affordable technologies for drinking water purification. His pesticide removal technology has reached about 10 million people. Along with his associates, he has incubated seven companies and three of them have production units. His arsenic removal technology, approved for national implementation, is delivering arsenic free water to about 1.2 million people every day. He is a recipient of several awards including the Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar Prize, The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) prize, Padma Shri, Nikkei Asia Prize and the Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz International Prize for Water. He is a Fellow of all the science and engineering academies of India, The World Academy of Sciences and American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is a distinguished professor in a few institutions in India and is also on the graduate faculty of Purdue University. He is the author of several books and is many important journals and is an associate editor of ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering. He has authored popular science books in Malayalam and is the recipient of Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award for knowledge literature. He has received the Lifetime Achievement Research Award of IIT Madras and Distinguished Alumnus Award of IISc. As part of his philanthropic activities, he supports a school in his village where 500 students are on rolls.