Amurtur Anilkumar is a Professor of the Practice of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at Vanderbilt University. He has been a NASA investigator and operations manager of microgravity fluid phenomena experiments conducted on Space Shuttle flights and on the International Space Station. He is the founding director of the Vanderbilt Aerospace Design Laboratory and faculty advisor to the Vanderbilt Student Launch Team, which has won four back-to-back NASA university student launch national titles and fifteen individual awards of excellence from NASA and equivalent number of awards from AIAA. Dr. Anilkumar was recently honored as the 2016 Faculty Advisor of the Year, and the Abe Zarem Educator of the Year by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). He has also received many other awards from NASA, AIAA, and Vanderbilt University, including the School of Engineering Award for Excellence in Teaching. Dr. Anilkumar graduated with a B.Tech. degree in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Madras, and a MS and PhD in Mechanical Engineering and Aeronautics from the Graduate Aerospace Laboratories at the California Institute of Technology.