Subsequently he worked at Virginia Polytechnic and State University, USA (stationed at NASA, Langley, Hampton) for two years from 1980 to 1982. Between 1995 and 1997 and again from 1998 to 2004 he was teaching at the School of Materials Engineering., NTU Singapore. Formerly he was a Professor at the Department of Metallurgical Engineering at IIT, Madras. Dr.O.Prabhakar has been teaching and carrying out research in various aspects of Materials engineering for the past 39 years. He has guided 13 Ph.Ds, 5 M.S, 12 M.Tech and numerous B.Tech projects in these areas. He has published about 50 technical papers in refereed journals and presented about 50 papers in conferences. He was also the Head of the Department of Metallurgical Engineering at IIT, Madras from 1987 to 1991. He was the recipient of a few awards in India.

Presently he manages a company named “OP-TECH” which extends consultancy services in areas relating to materials selection, destructive and nondestructive testing, advanced materials characterization, materials processing and softwares in materials engineering. He has been a consultant to M/S Sundaram Brake lining for the past 24 months. He has extensive experience in advising and carrying out projects for industries in India in the field of Materials Engineering.

Before joining IIT in 2000, he was employed as an Associate Professor with the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics at Mississippi State University.

He has worked in the US in Richland, Washington (1974) on micorwave dosimetry, at Bell Labs, New Jersey on Choralsky growth of InP and GaAs (1982), at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore on plasma nitriding (1981).Since 1992 he qualified as a NDT level III in UT, ET and VT according to ASNT as well as ACCP in UT and EN473 in the segmants gerneral industries and pressure vessles. For 15 years he worked in the quality assurance of industrial installations (power, petrochemical, automotive, manufacturing, aerospace), NDT, fundamental materials research and technical software development employing metallurgical, destructive and non destructive methods. He held the positions as the managing director of European Testing Products and Services, Chennai (1992 to 2000), the Chairman of QNET Quality Network 1996 onwards (a joint venture company with the Fraunhofer Institute for Non Destructive Testing, Saarbruecken, Germany) and the CEO of Lucid Software (2000 - 2004).

He is a member of many professional societies, the Indian Society for Non-destructive Testing (ISNT), the German Society for Non-destructive Testing (DGZFP), the American Society for Non Destructive Testing (ASNT), the Indian Institute of Metals (IIM), the Materials Research Society of India (MRSC), the Acoustic Society of India (ASI), the German Society for Materials (DGM) and the German Institution of Engineers (VDI). He is a trustee of TARA educational society, Chennai and on the editorial board of the monthly internet magazine, NDT.net. He received a best paper award during the World Conference for Non Destructive Testing, New Delhi 1996.

In NDT training, he collaborates with OP Tech, headed by Prof. O. Prabhakar. He is involved in the development, verification, transfer to industry and training of advanced NDT methods using digital techniques in RT, ET and UT, like CR - computed radiography, CT - computed tomography, PET - pulsed eddy current, TOFD - time of flight diffraction, SAFT synthetic aperture focusing, SPA - sampling phased array.

He has worked 6 years in Aircraft maintenance sector performing hands on NDT on Airframe and Engine components and training & certification of the Aerospace NDT staff. He has experience in NDT auditing in accordance with requirements to SNT-TC-1A, NAS 410 etc. He has also conducted NDT facility audits in one of the best aircraft maintenance company in Asia. He has also been part of NDT facility setup, facility audit to ensure compliance with Boeing specifications and ASTM standards etc. He has also undergone critical NDT inspection courses on Aircraft engines. He has over 9 years of experience and conversant with the application of conventional and Advance NDT in Oil and Petrochemical Industries. His experience includes, hands on testing, performance evaluation of NDT inspectors, Training of NDT operators, writing, reviewing and approving NDT procedures in Aerospace and Oil & Petrochemical Industry. He has more than 12 months of experience in PAUT and TOFD application in Oil and Petrochemical industries. While he was in Atomic Technologies Pte Ltd he was instrumental in establishing the capability of PAUT & TOFD and acquiring market place in PAUT & TOFD. He has been working closely with Quadsonic Pte Ltd (formerly alliance partner of Atomic) in conducting presentation and demonstration of PAUT and TOFD methodology to Oil and Petrochemical industry clients.

Presently, He is working in A-Star Training and Consultancy (Olympus NDT appointed Training Partner) for development of training programs for PAUT and TOFD in Singapore.

He has performed encoded PAUT and TOFD examination of welds on Pressure Vessels, Storage tanks, Pipes and Air drums in Oil and Petrochemical industries in Singapore since past one year using Omni scan equipment.

Before joining A-Star, he was working for Setsco, a pioneer NDT company in Singapore. Presently, he is assisting Dr. OP and Mr. Khaja in developing training programs for PAUT and TOFD methodology.