In 1971 he completed his bachelor's degree at the University of Madras, received his PhD in physics in 1973 from the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay, and defended his doctorate in physics on the topic "The influence of external fields on non-equilibrium systems " under the guidance of Nobel laureate I. R. Prigogine in 1979 at the University of Texas at Austin. It is considered the first to introduce the term " Gibbs energy flow" into scientific circulation. He teaches at the University of North Carolina.