Amit Kumar

Dr. Amit Kumar has served as the NSERC/Cenovus/Alberta Innovates Associate Industrial Research Chair in Energy and Environmental Systems Engineering since September 2012. He is also the Cenovus Energy Endowed Chair in Environmental Engineering in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Alberta (U of A). He currently leads a large group of researchers made up of postdoctoral fellows, graduate and undergraduate students, and research assistants in the areas of integrated energy and environmental modelling and life cycle & techno-economic assessments of energy systems. His research program focuses on assessing both conventional and non-conventional sources of energy. Amit Kumar is very active in the scientific community. He is a member of and/or contributes to several professional and technical societies; he contributes to national, regional, faculty, and department committees; and he reviews proposals for funding agencies and manuscripts for refereed journals and conference publications.

Dr. Kumar was recently recognized by Reuters in the list of the world’s top climate scientists and elected to the Center for Legislative Energy and Environmental Research (CLEER) University Advisory Board, an organization of legislators from 14 states and 2 provinces, Alberta and Saskatchewan. In 2017 he was appointed Deputy Director of Future Energy Systems, a $75 million initiative at the U of A funded by the Government of Canada through their Canada First Research Excellence Fund (CFREF). Dr. Kumar also teaches several graduate and undergraduate classes at the University of Alberta in the Faculty of Engineering.

Dr. Kumar has been invited to serve on a number of expert energy panels for, among others, the European Commission, the National Science Foundation, Natural Resources Canada, the California Environmental Protection Agency, and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. He is the Associate Editor of the Canadian Biosystems Engineering Journal in the area of renewable energy. He has served in various key roles for professional societies, including as the Chair of the Renewable Power Generation Committee of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) and as both Alberta Regional Director and Awards Committee Chair for the Canadian Society of Bioengineering (CSBE). He reviews manuscripts for several refereed journals. He was awarded the Young Engineer of the Year award by CSBE for his outstanding contribution in the areas of bioenergy and biofuels.

Dr. Kumar completed his BSc in Energy Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India, and moved to the Asian Institute of Technology for his MSc in Energy Technology. He joined the University of British Columbia as a postdoctoral fellow in 2004 after receiving his PhD from the U of A that same year. A true energy engineer, he couldn’t stay away from oil country and moved back to the U of A in 2005 as an Assistant Professor. He was promoted to Professor in 2015 and since then has been successfully expanding his research program in the area of energy and environmental systems engineering.

Edmonton is now home for Dr. Kumar. He lives here with his wife, Vijoy, and their two young children - a daughter, Anvi, and a son, Atharv. He is a cricket fan but follows ice hockey and the Oilers with a lot of interest.