Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Dr. KR Sridhar is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Bloom Energy, a world leader in reliable, always-on, on-site power. Prior to founding Bloom Energy, Dr. Sridhar was Director of the Space Technologies Laboratory (STL) at the University of Arizona, where he was also a professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering.
Under his leadership, STL won several nationally competitive contracts to conduct research and development for the exploration of and flight experiments to Mars. Dr. Sridhar has served as an advisor to NASA and has led major consortia of industry, academia, and national labs. His work for the NASA Mars program to convert Martian atmospheric gases to oxygen for propulsion and life support was recognized by Fortune Magazine, where he was cited as “one of the top five futurists inventing tomorrow, today.”
Dr. Sridhar serves on the Board of Directors for C3.ai, Inc., the External Advisory Board at Caltech’s Resnick Sustainability Institute, and the Board of Visitors at the Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He has also served as a strategic limited partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and a special advisor to New Enterprise Associates, two premier venture capital firms in Silicon Valley.
An early pioneer in green tech, Dr. Sridhar has served on many technical committees, panels, and advisory boards and has numerous publications and patents. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering in the US and the Indian National Academy of Engineering. He received his bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering with Honors from the University of Madras (now called NIT, Trichy), India, as well as his master’s degree in Nuclear Engineering and a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.