Radhakrishna Tumbalam Gooty received a Dual Degree (Bachelors (Honors) and Masters) in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India. For his Master’s thesis, he investigated the effect of Marangoni stresses on liquid-liquid extraction in microchannels under the supervision of Prof. S. Pushpavanam. Currently, he is pursuing a PhD also in chemical engineering at Purdue University under the guidance of Prof. Rakesh Agrawal and Prof. Mohit Tawarmalani. His research involves developing new mathematical programs and optimization algorithms for systematically identifying energy-efficient and cost-effective multicomponent distillation configurations. For this work, he received the AIChE Separations Division Graduate Student Research Award in the area of Distillation and Absorption.