Short Biography of Dr. Ashok Kumar
Dr. Ashok Kumar is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of South Florida, Tampa. Dr. Kumar is also affiliated faculty member of Clean Energy Research Center (CERC) and USF Nanomedicine Research Center. Before joining USF, Dr. Kumar was employed as tenure-track faculty in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of South Alabama. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Indian Institute of Technology (Kanpur), and Ph.D. from North Carolina State University, Raleigh.
His research is focused towards the development of nanotechnology based novel materials for multifunctional applications. He has published two textbooks, edited seven proceeding books, three invited review articles, 11 book chapters including 170 peer reviewed articles (approx. 102 journal articles and 80 conference proceeding articles) and has presented approximately 255 papers in regional and national conferences including 48 invited talks. He has been an invited speaker and session organizer at many national and international meetings. He has received an excess of 8.7 million dollar of research funding as PI and more than 24.3 million dollars as Co-PI. Dr. Kumar also acted as Cluster Director of the Alabama NASA EPSCoR Advanced Materials research program of approx. $3.5M (1994-1999) to supervise the state-wide research activities comprising of five major universities and six small colleges with two HBCU’s. Dr. Kumar has supervised 12 post-docs, 10 Ph.D. and 43 MS students as major professor. His research has been supported from federal agencies (NSF, NASA, DOD and DOE) and private companies, such as, Sematech, Honeywell, General Motors, Lucent Technologies, Novellus, IBM, and Cabot Microelectronics etc. Dr. Kumar has strong commitment to integrate research and education with experience as an active member (Co-PI) for various NSF Grants (GK-12, REU & RET Sites etc.). His other interests include K-12 educational outreach, gender and science education and nanotechnology industrial outreach.
His excellence as a researcher has been recognized by a number of honors, including ASM Fellow, ASM-IIM Visiting Lecture Award (2007), Theodore and Venette Askounes Ashford Distinguished Scholar Award (2006), USF Outstanding Faculty Research Achievement Award (2004), USF President Faculty Excellence Award (2003), NSF Faculty Early CAREER Development Award (2000), National Research Council Twining Fellowship Award (1997) and, NSF and DOE EPSCoR Young Investigator Awards (1996-97). He also received the Professor Honorario award from the Universidad del Norte, Barranquilla, Colombia (2009).
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