Prabir K. Chandra

I was born in Bankura in West Bengal, India. I went to Bankura Zilla School and eventually got admission at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur through Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) and received both B. Tech. and M. Tech. degrees in Agricultural and Crop Process Engineering, respectively. Later I was married to Krishna and went to Japan to work on rice milling and drying equipment at Yamamoto Manufacturing Company. From there I returned to India and worked at the Central Food and Technological Research Institute (CFTRI) in Mysore. Two years after working at CFTRI, I went to the University of California in Davis in 1979 and did PhD in Food Engineering. I then joined Clemson University as a Research Specialist in 1983 and worked on Biomass Gasifier-Combustor with Prof. Fred A. Payne. One of the research papers published in the journal of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) with co-author Dr. Payne received the prestigious First-Author Paper Award in 1985.

From 1986-1988 I taught Food Engineering courses at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur as an Associate Professor. I then left for Brazil to join Escola Superior de Agricultura de Lavras (later upgraded to Universidade Federal de Lavras-UFLA) as a Visiting Professor in 1989 and taught there until 1998 in the Department of Food Science. It was there that I wrote this book with Prof. R. Paul Singh as co-author. After that I joined University of Sao Paulo before coming back to the USA in 2000.

With Krishna we have three sons: Neelav (born in India), Amick (in the USA), and Evan (in Brazil). Neelav now is the Lead Systems Engineer in Northern Digital, Inc. in Bakersfield, California. Amick is Senior RF Engineer in Lockheed Martin Corporation, Chelmsford, Massachusetts, and Evan joined as Athletic Trainer in East Bridgewater High School in Massachusetts. Krishna is taking care of the household and also working as Testing Technician for new and used brands of telephones. Besides teaching mathematics to the working adults as well as juvenile delinquents, I keep myself busy in editing technical articles, writing, watching tennis, and cooking and developing spice mixes to simplify cooking for the non-cooks.

I am writing another math reference book for K-12 students that will demystify some basic concepts in mathematics giving more importance on why's than how's. Teaching mathematics in most schools has been plagued by oversimplification and teachers' tendency of pleasing the learners than making them go through the rigor of learning process that requires dedication, hard work and self belief.