Vijay Modi is currently Professor and Chair of Mechanical Engineering.  He is also affiliated with the Earth Institute through the Earth Engineering Center. After obtaining his B. Tech. in mechanical engineering at Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay, he joined Cornell University where he completed his Ph.D. in 1984.  He joined Columbia in 1986 after two years as a post-doctoral research associate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he worked on gas turbines.  He is currently involved with Earth Institute efforts on energy, infrastructure and development.  His current research projects include: Energy and transport for meeting the Millennium Development Goals, infrastructure priorities for economic and social development, use of spatial data in energy technology choices, CO2 sequestration and and energy technologies for decentralized applications. His past energy related work encompasses thermal power plants, gas turbines, solar energy resource assessment, wind speed measurement and sensing and design of environmental systems for the energy and paper industry.   Prof. Modi won the inaugural Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award in 1996 and also the Greater Teacher Award in 1997 from the Society of Columbia Graduates. Prof. Modi is author/co-author of more than forty journal publications.