Dhinakar Kompala obtained his B.Tech. (1979) in Chemical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and his M.S. (1982) and Ph.D. (1984) in Chemical Engineering from Purdue University, USA. He has since been on the faculty of Chemical and Biological Engineering of University of Colorado at Boulder in USA. He has conducted research in the areas of recombinant microbial and mammalian cell cultures, bioreactor design and operating strategies, and mathematical modelling of biological growth and production processes. He has authored about 70 publications and guided over 20 doctoral and post-doctoral research fellows.

Prof. Kompala has organized biotechnology programs at the national meetings of American Chemical Society and American Institute of Chemical Engineers and participated in organizing numerous focused conferences on Biochemical Engineering, Cell Culture Engineering, Metabolic Engineering organized by US Engineering Foundation and Engineering Conferences International. He is a section editor of BioMedCentral Biotechnology journal, and on the editorial boards of two other biotechnology journals. He currently also serves as the Chief Scientific Officer of an emerging biotechnology company, Richcore Lifesciences Private Limited, in Bangalore, India.