Prof. Anil Prabhakar received his PhD in 1997 from Carnegie Mellon University, with a dissertation on the Nonlinear Spin-wave Optical Interactions. He has been with the faculty at the Dept. of Electrical Engineering, IIT-Madras since 2002, and is engaged across multiple laboratories that work on quantum technologies, fibre lasers and opto-fluidics.

He is a member of the Scientific Management Board for LIGO-India, to detect gravity waves, and the India-based Neutrino Observatory. He currently serves on the Editorial Boards for Scientific Reports (Nature) and the IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, and is nominated to represent India at the IUPAP C.9 panel on Magnetism.

His current research interests in the areas of quantum technologies, have applications in metrology, quantum communication and quantum computing. As a Founder of QuNu Labs, incubated by IIT Madras, he focused on secure optical communications. An earlier startup, Unilumen Photonics that focused on fibre lasers was acquired by Jiva Sciences. He is currently the Director of Yali Mobility and Enability Foundation, companies that focus on rehabilitation engineering. He has over 50 research publications, has co-authored a book on Spin Waves, a few book chapters, and has 18 patents on a wide range of devices in areas of photonics, magnonics and assistive devices.