Romesh C. Batra is a University Distinguished Professor and Clifton C. Garvin Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), Blacksburg, Virginia. He was born in Village Dherowal (now in Pakistan), Punjab, India. His family migrated from Dherowal to Shahabad Markanda, Haryana, India after India became an independent country. Dr. Batra has authored the book, Elements of Continuum Mechanics, AIAA Educational Series. His research group has published in reputable refereed and widely read journals more than 460 papers of which about 40 are single-authored and nearly 320 have two authors; these are documented on the website: http://www.beam.vt.edu/batra. Early life and education He earned his B.Sc. (Mechanical Engineering), M.A. Sc. (Mechanical Engineering) and Ph.D. (Mechanics and Materials Science) degrees, respectively, in 1968, ’69 and ‘72 from Thapar University (India), University of Waterloo (Canada) and the Johns Hopkins University (USA). His Ph.D. degree was under the tutelage of the eminent elastician, Professor J. L. Ericksen. After a year of Post-doctoral experience with Professor Ericksen at the JHU and another year with Professor Mark Levinson at the McMaster University, Canada, he joined the Missouri University of Science and Technology (MUST), Rolla, USA as a visiting assistant professor in 1974 and was promoted to full professor in 1981. He joined Virginia Tech as the Clifton C. Garvin Professor in 1994, and was honored as a University Distinguished Professor in 2019. Teaching and research Dr. Batra has been teaching courses on the Finite Element Method, Continuum Mechanics and Nonlinear Elasticity to M.Sc. and Ph.D. students since 1974. His lectures for the 1st graduate level course on Continuum Mechanics are available on youtube.com. Nearly a dozen out of his 40 former Ph.D. students hold faculty positions in India, China, Chile, Taiwan, S. Korea, France, Canada and the USA. Several other former Ph.D. students hold leadership positions in civilian industries and research laboratories. Graduate Student Mentoring: His Ph.D. students are listed on the website: http://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=105522 Research Areas: His research group has worked in several areas of applied mechanics such as adiabatic shear bands (these are narrow regions of intense plastic deformation that form during high strain-rate deformations of most metallic alloys and generally precede fracture), composite structures, functionally graded materials/structures, nanostructures, smart materials/structures, micro-electro-mechanical systems, and computational mechanics including the finite element and meshless methods. Software Development: Dr. Batra’s group has developed software based on the finite element and meshless