Despite decades of investigations on evaporation/condensation based thermal transport processes, non-equilibrium regimes are still poorly understood and have been the subject of various theoretical , experimental , and numerical investigations due to potential applications in microscale devices and novel technologies. Specifically, the process of initial vapor bubble nucleation, which is an important aspect in understanding two-phase cooling phenomena, has remained primarily a black box and is often described by a set of fitting parameters . Vapor bubble formation in water typically occurs either by cavitation (through pressure reduction) or boiling (by increasing temperature). Experimental investigations have shown that the bubble typically nucleates at much lower values of pressures and temperatures than what is predicted by classical nucleation theory . Rationalization of this observation has involved consideration of surface defects, floating particles, and entrapped gases or bubbles . Although cavitation in simple liquids has been studied extensively using computer simulations , limited investigations have been performed at state points away from the vapor-liquid spinodal and on heterogeneous systems .