Thalappil Pradeep is an Institute Professor at IITM. He is the Deepak Parekh Institute Chair Professor and is also a Professor of Chemistry. He studied at the University of Calicut, Indian Institute of Science, UC Berkeley, and Purdue. His research interests are in molecular and nanoscale materials, and he develops instrumentation for such studies. He is an author of over 525 scientific papers in journals and is an inventor of 125 patents or patent applications. In addition to the work on advanced materials, he is involved in the development of affordable technologies for drinking water purification and some of them have been commercialized. His pesticide removal technology is estimated to have reached about 10 million people. Along with his associates, he has incubated seven companies and three of them have production units. His arsenic removal technology, approved for national implementation, is delivering arsenic free water to about 2 million people every day. He is a recipient of several awards including the Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar Prize (2008), The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) prize in Chemistry (2018), Padma Shri (2020), Nikkei Asia Prize (2020) and Prince Sultan Bin Abulaziz International Prize for Water (2022). He is a Fellow of all the science and engineering academies of India, Royal Society of Chemistry, TWAS, and American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has written several books and is part of over ten scientific journals and is an associate editor of ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering. He has authored popular science books in Malayalam and is a recipient of Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award for knowledge literature. He has received the Lifetime Achievement Research Award of IIT Madras and Distinguished Alumnus Award of Indian Institute of Science. As part of his philanthropic activities, he supports a school in his village where ~500 students are on rolls.