Krishna Kumar

Krishna Kumar serves as an Associate Professor and J. Neils Thompson Centennial Teaching Fellow in Civil Engineering within the Fariborz Maseeh Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin's Cockrell School of Engineering. He is also a core faculty member at the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences. Kumar obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 2015, specializing in multi-scale multiphase modeling of granular flows under the supervision of Professor Kenichi Soga. He holds an M.S. in Civil Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras in 2010 and a B.E. in Civil Engineering from Thiagarajar College of Engineering, Anna University in 2008. Before joining UT Austin as an assistant professor in January 2019, he worked as a Research Associate in Computational Geomechanics at the University of Cambridge.

His research interests encompass physical AI, learned world models via graph neural networks and operator learning, differentiable simulations such as Material Point Method, Discrete Element Method, and Lattice Boltzmann Method, uncertainty-aware control for robotics in deformable environments, and digital twins for assessing hazard and infrastructure response. Kumar advances high-performance computing, numerical modeling of natural hazards, explainable AI, and hybrid machine learning with differentiable programming for inverse problems. He directs the $7 million NSF-funded Chishiki-AI project, establishing a national ecosystem for AI integration in civil engineering, and leads global professional education programs reaching practitioners worldwide. In 2024, he received the NSF CAREER Award for the project “HayaRupu: Accelerating Natural Hazard Engineering with AI-Driven Discovery Loops,” which focuses on AI-enhanced prediction in landslide-prone areas and includes educational outreach to promote STEM diversity.

Kumar's accolades include the Moncrief Grand Challenge Faculty Award from the Oden Institute in 2024, Ervin S. Perry Student Appreciation Award from the department in 2023, Dean’s Award for Outstanding Engineering Teaching by an Assistant Professor from UT Austin in 2022-23, and the C. S. Desai Award from the Indian Geotechnical Society for the best paper on constitutive modeling of geologic materials. As a 2023 Provost's Teaching Fellow, he develops innovative teaching methods including murder mysteries and personalized AI tutors for courses such as Introduction to Geotechnical Engineering.

Professional Email: krishnak@utexas.edu