Vijay Vittal was born in Bangalore, India, on December 25, 1955. He received the B.E. degree in electrical engineering from the B.M.S. College of Engineering, Bangalore, India, in 1977; the M.Tech. degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India, in 1979; and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Iowa State University, Ames, in 1982.

Vijay Vittal is the Ira A. Fulton Chair Professor in the Electrical Engineering department at Arizona State University. From 1982-2004 he served as a faculty member at Iowa State University, where he was an Anston Marston Distinguished Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. In addition, Dr. Vittal was a Murray and Ruth Harpole Professor and Director of the university's Electric Power Research Center and site director of the National Science Foundation IUCRC Power System Engineering Research Center.

His research interests are in the area of power system dynamics, dynamic security assessment of power systems, power system operation and control, and application of robust control techniques to power systems. He is the author and co-author of several papers in his field. In 1992 he co-authored the textbook entitled Power System Transient Stability Assessment using the Transient Energy Function Method with A. A. Fouad, and in 1999 he co-authored the textbook entitled Power System Analysis with A. R. Bergen. He currently is the director of the Power Systems Engineering Research Center (PSERC), a university/industry consortium.

He is a recipient of the 1985 Presidential Young Investigator Award. In 1997, he was elected as a Fellow of IEEE. He was also the recipient of the 2000 IEEE Power Engineering Society Outstanding Power Engineering Educator Award. He served as the program director for power systems for the National Science Foundation Division of Electrical and Communication Systems in Washington, D.C., from 1993 to 1994. From 1998-2000 he was the Chairman of the IEEE Power Engineering Society System Dynamic Performance Committee. He was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering in 2004. He is the Editor in Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Power Systems and the IEEE Power and Energy Society Vice President for Education and Industry Relations.