This lecture series was instituted by Prof. Arun Bansil. He is a University Distinguished Professor in physics at Northeastern University (NU). He served for over two years at the US Department of Energy managing the flagship Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics program (2008-10). He is an academic editor of the international Journal of Physics and Chemistry of Solids (1994-), the founding director of NU's Advanced Scientific Computation Center (1999-), and serves on various international editorial boards and commissions.