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Sunil Kumar

Program Head of Mechanical Engineering; Professor of Mechanical Engineering; Affiliation: NYU Abu Dhabi
Education: PhD University of California, Berkeley

Research Areas: transport of light and thermal radiation

Sunil Kumar is a mechanical engineer whose scholarly research focuses on the transport of light and thermal radiation, specifically examining how lasers interact with surfaces and scattering media, fire dynamics, thermal-fluid analysis, and applied mathematics. He came to NYUAD from Polytechnic Institute of New York University (now NYU Tandon School of Engineering), where he was Graduate Dean and Associate Provost, and former head of the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Manufacturing Engineering.

He has also taught at the University of California Berkeley, was a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories, and a visiting scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California. Kumar’s publications include approximately 60 journal articles, over 200 conference papers, one book, Heating, Ventilating, and Air Conditioning Handbook for Design and Implementation, and research monographs: “Nanotechnologies for the Life Sciences” and “Modeling and Simulation-Based Life Cycle Engineering.”

Kumar is research leader for NYU's Fire Research efforts, including the Advanced Learning Through Integrated Visual Environments (ALIVE) project, which educates, trains, and disseminates critical information to both career and volunteer firefighters via a unique game-based computer program.

Since its inception, ALIVE has been adopted as a training tool by more than 100 fire departments that encompass more than 25,000 firefighters, including those from New York City and Chicago—two of the largest departments in the United States. ALIVE is funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Kumar holds a BTech. from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur; a MS and MA from the State University of New York, Buffalo; and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. 

Courses Taught