Dr. Prakruthi Hareesh serves as the Smart Manufacturing Domain Lead at BITS Pilani, Work Integrated Learning Programmes (WILP). She holds a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park, USA, with expertise in Mechatronics and MEMS transducer development. With over a decade of academic and industry experience, she has led more than 40 turnkey projects in the semiconductor and manufacturing sectors. At BITS Pilani, she leads Smart and Digital Manufacturing initiatives, developing industry-relevant curriculum with cutting edge experiential learning modules and learning factories in emerging areas like Cyberphysical systems and Digital twins, machine vision, autonomous and collaborative robots and extended reality. Her work bridges applied research and industrial practice, fostering innovation and workforce transformation in next-generation manufacturing.