Professor Barai is currently the Director of BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus. He joined the institute on 14th Jan 2020. Prior to that he was Dean (Undergraduate Studies) and Professor (HAG) in the Department of Civil Engineering at IIT Kharagpur specializing in Structural Engineering. He obtained his Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in 1995. He completed his bachelor's and master's in Civil Engineering from MS University of Baroda. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Solid Mechanics, Materials and Structures, Tel Aviv University. He was also Erskine Visiting Fellow at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, a BOYSCAST fellow at Carnegie Mellon University and a visiting scientist at the National University of Singapore. His research interests include computational intelligence applications, structural health monitoring, and concrete technology. He has published over 240+ articles in leading Journals & Conferences, 4 books published by Springer, and has co-edited a Conference Proceedings also published by Springer. Professor Barai has served in various administrative positions at IIT Kharagpur. He played an important role as Chairman/Vice-Chairman of GATE (Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering) for four years. He was involved in the pioneering work of a complete online examination. For more than three years, he served as the Chairman of the Career Development Centre to facilitate IIT students’ summer internships and career placements in reputed national and international organizations. He was instrumental in achieving an impressive record-breaking success for student placements during his tenure. For more than two years, he was Professor-In-Charge (PIC) of Intellectual Property Rights and Industrial Relations (IPR&IR) at the Sponsored Research and Consultancy Office. As PIC, he contributed immensely towards the rare feat of filing 100 patents in 100 days at IIT Kharagpur. He served as the NPTEL Discipline Coordinator of Civil Engineering. He also served as Chairman of Kshitij, the Techno-Management Festival of IIT Kharagpur for two years. Professor Barai received the 11th CIDC Vishwakarma Award (2019) for his achievements as an academician.