Kurichi Kumar is the Director of Research & Technology – Asia for Rolls-Royce. In this role, he is responsible for Research & Technology programs and collaboration activities with various research partners in the Asia Pacific region. In addition, he also manages the company’s Advanced Technology Center operations in Singapore. Prior to joining Rolls-Royce, Kurichi held a regional role with General Motors Asia Pacific where he was responsible for strategy and implementation of Global IT systems and tools for High Performance Computing, Computer Aided Engineering and Testing across the Engineering Centres in Asia. Previous to that, he was the Deputy Executive Director of the Institute of High Performance Computing, one of the Research Institutes under the Agency for Science Technology and Research in Singapore. His role included promoting the adoption and use of High Performance Computing based engineering simulations by the different industrial sectors in Singapore. Before coming to Singapore in 1996, he was with Cray Research in the USA as a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Specialist working with the automotive companies in the use of supercomputers for large scale complex CFD simulations. Kurichi received his Masters and Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Windsor, Canada in 1983 and 1986 respectively. He graduated with a B.E. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Madras, India in 1980.

Kurichi is a member of the National Cloud Computing Advisory Council in Singapore. He has published over 60 articles in Journals and Conferences in the areas of Fluid Mechanics and Heat Transfer.