Dr. Sunil Kumar
PhD Electrical & Computer Engineering '96

Sunil Kumar is Dean and George Pratt Shultz Professor of Operations Management at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Dr. Kumar’s academic research includes performance evaluation and control of manufacturing systems, service operations, and communications networks. In particular, he studies systems affected by stochastic variability via mathematical models. He also studies application of optimization methods and control theory to managerial problems. Dr. Kumar has published dozens of scholarly research articles and has served as the editor of the Stochastic Models area of the journal Operations Research. He co-developed a widely used factory simulator for teaching operations management. The simulator, “Littlefield Technologies,” has been used in classes at more than 50 business and engineering schools. He also served as an operations consultant to several companies.

Dr. Kumar joined the Chicago Booth faculty on January 1, 2011, after spending 14 years on the faculty of the Stanford University Graduate School of Business where he also served as senior associate dean for academic affairs, overseeing the school’s MBA program and leading faculty groups in marketing and organizational behavior.

Born in India, Dr. Kumar received a Master of Engineering degree in computer science and automation from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore and a Bachelor of Engineering degree from Mangalore University in Surathkal. He earned a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.