Dr. B.Venkateswara Rao did his Ph.D. in Water Resources from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University Hyderabad (JNTUH) and is presently working as Professor of Water Resources and formerly, Director School of Continuing and Distance Education, JNTUH. He has obtained his masters degree from Andhra University in the field of Geophysics in the year 1984.  He was an anchor to develop the Centre for Water Resources by starting M.Tech. (Water and Environmental Technology) and Ph.D. (Water Resources Management) programmes apart from developing relevant laboratories at the centre. He has also developed Centre for Earth, Atmosphere and Weather Modification Technologies (CEA&WMT) at JNTUH by starting Ph.D. (Earth and Atmospheric Sciences) and M.Sc. (Satellite Meteorology and Weather Informatics). He has introduced several P.G. courses in the fields of Science,  Technology and Management in the correspondence cum contact mode at JNTUH and used Information and communication Technologies effectively to reach the masses. He was a state level Coordinator of the A.P. Stat Cloud Seeding Programme from 2008 and 2009. He has executed 15 R&D projects sanctioned by national and international funding agencies and guided 60 M.Tech. and 6 Ph.D. thesis in the water and environmental issues. He has published over 120 research papers many of them are in both National and International journals. Prior to his academic career he worked in number of field organizations in exploring the Ground Water and responsible for drilling hundreds of wells in various geologic terrains such as Khondalites, Granites and Basalts.
 
Dr. Rao is life member of many professional organizations in the field of water resources, few of them includes IWRA, AGID, IWRS, IAH, AHI, AGU and AEG.  His areas of research interest include Ground Water Resources Exploration and Management, Environmental pollution and Impact Assessment, Hard Rock Hydrology, Siltation and Sustainability of Multipurpose Reservoir projects Weather Modification and Watershed Management. He is referee to several national and International Journals in the fields of Water and Environment.
 
He is an expert committee member for Selection of the projects and personnel in the prestigious National bodies like Department of Science and Technology, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and National Geophysical Research Institute, Central Research Institute for Dry land Agriculture and Osmania University. He served as Member Board of Intermediate Govt. of Andhra Pradesh. He has been governing body member for many engineering colleges in Andhra Pradesh. He is a member of technical advisory committee of National Institute of Hydrology. The University of Birmingham, U.K. has conferred upon Dr. Rao the title of Honorary Research Fellow in the school of Engineering during 2004-2005. He was a Visiting Professor at the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Rutgers University, Newark, USA during 2007 and 2014. In recognition of his outstanding contribution in the field of New and Emerging Sciences, the Govt. of Andhra Pradesh is conferred on him the Andhra Pradesh Scientist Award (2006). In recognition of his outstanding contribution in the field of Groundwater Exploration, the National Geoscience Award (2011) is conferred upon Dr. Bekkam Venkateswara Rao, by Government of India. He has been elected as a Fellow of Andhra Pradesh Akademi of Sciences (APAS) in the year 2014. He was also a Fellow of Indian Geophysical Union (IGU). The Govt. of Telangana has awarded Dr. Rao the Best Teacher Award (2015). The Association of Exploration Geophysicists has conferred upon Dr. Rao AEG’s Sriram Srinivasan Award (2016) for the his significant contributions in groundwater exploration. Indian National Science Academy (INSA) has awarded Prof. Rao the INSA Teachers Award (2016) for inspiring students to take up careers in Science and Technology.