Dr. Placid M. Ferreira is the Head and the Tungchao Julia Lu Professor of Mechanical Science and Engineering at Illinois. From 2003 to 2010, he was the director of the Center for Chemical-Electrical-Mechanical Manufacturing Systems (Nano-CEMMS), an NSF-sponsored Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center. He graduated with a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University in 1987, M.Tech (Mechanical) from IIT Bombay, 1982 and B.E. (Mechanical) for University of Bombay in 1980. He has been on the mechanical engineering faculty at Illinois since 1987, serving as the associate head for graduate programs and research from 1999 to 2002. Professor Ferreira's research and teaching interests are in the area of industrial automation and include computer-controlled machine-tools, nanomanufacturing and metrology, computational geometry and solid modeling with applications to automated process planning, and the discrete-event control of large-scale flexibly automated systems. Professor Ferreira received NSF's Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1990, SME's Outstanding Young Investigator Award in 1991 and the University of Illinois' University Scholar Award in 1995. He became a Society of Manufacturing Engineers Fellow in 2011, American Society of Mechanical Engineers Fellow in 2013, and AAAS Fellow in 2014. He has served as an associate editor and editor for IIE Transactions on Design and Manufacturing and editor for IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering (2003-2007) and is on the editorial board for the International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing.