Dr. Ajit Balakrishna

Dr. Ajit Balakrishna has more than 25 years experience in the application of CFD to industrial reactors, especially in the field of semiconductor equipment. He graduated with a BTech in Chemical Engineering from IIT Bombay in 1989 and went to do his PhD at the University of Minnesota under the guidance of Profs Lanny Schmidt and Rutherford Aris. He then did a postdoc with Prof Klavs Jensen at MIT before joining Applied Materials in 1997. He has been at Applied through most of his career, except for a short stint at Novellus (now Lam) and a software startup. He has over 20 patents, derived from the application of simulation. One of these patents was selected as an Applied Materials Patent of the Year in 2018 and inducted into their Hall of Fame in 2021. His current interests are in the areas of digital twins, and the interface between emerging AI technologies and simulations.