Birendra is an Associate Professor in the Dept. of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Southern California. He is a computational scientist and a petroleum engineer with two decades of experience. He has a master’s degree in Petroleum Engineering from Stanford University and a master’s and Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from MIT. He has several years of experience in the energy industry working for Schlumberger, Occidental Petroleum, and iReservoir. Birendra is interested in the numerical modeling of multi-physics processes of fluid flow, heat transport, and mechanical deformation in geophysical systems. His research group (GEM Lab) creates theoretical and computational tools to address challenges related to oil and gas recovery, geothermal energy, induced seismicity, hydraulic fracturing, and groundwater remediation. His research has been published in top journals, and he has received multiple honors and awards for his contributions to petroleum engineering, geophysics, hydrogeology, and computational mechanics.In 2020, Birendra co-founded Eydle Inc., a company protecting enterprises from scams. He applies his AI research to detect scams on social media and websites, which is a growing societal and economic problem of present times.