Challa Vijaya Kumar, PhD is a senior professor at the University of Connecticut and has more than 40 years of research experience in interdisciplinary research areas including biological chemistry, physical chemistry, organic chemistry, photochemistry, biochemistry and material chemistry. He has more than 158 peer-reviewed publications and several book chapters in internationally reputed journals. He has been actively working in the area of bio-related two-dimensional materials for nearly 25 years and has published 10 papers on graphene related topics in the last 3 years. More importantly, his research lab pioneered the synthesis of graphene in aqueous conditions using proteins as exfoliating agents.