K. R. Sridhar founder and CEO of Bloom Energy
Sridhar was awarded a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the National Institute of Technology at Tiruchirappalli, India in 1982.[3] He moved to the United States in the 1980s and gained a M.S. innuclear engineering and a PhD in mechanical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.[1]
Recently a man in the name of K.R. Sridhar had shown to the world his Bloom Box which is the most talked about fuel cell-based energy source of 2010. The project was started about eight years ago with a capital of about $400 million. The media was taken aback by the press conference in Silicon Valley with people like California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger as part of the crowd. The little boxes that is believed to change the world in the future were first used by big companies like FedEx, Google, and others. The whole concept of the boxes are that they are like tiny power plants set in your own backyard. They are mainly run by any fuel source like natural gas, solar energy and others as they are used minimally to create a reaction with oxygen to convert it into electrical energy. Basically the power of the Bloom Box come from the ceramic plates that are piled on top of each other and they produced very clean electricity for your consumption.
K.R. Sidhar, who's originally from India, is the face of Bloom Energy, the company that invented the Bloom Box. He was formerly a professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering as well as Director of the Space Technologies Laboratory (STL) at the University of Arizona. At the helm of STL, K.R. Sidhar led the group to gather almost $20 million in nationally competed R&D contracts. As an advisor for NASA, K.R. Sidhar also led a team of scientists to develop an equipment so that human could live in Mars. It is through that mission that K.R. was able to conceptualize the now known device he calls Bloom Box.
It is quite amazing that this scientist can actually make a unit as large as bread loaf, which can produce electricity that can power an American home. Although this device now is overly hyped, many people are supporting him in his endeavor to promote clean energy that's simple to use, safe and uses common materials. The business of manufacturing these fuel cells that can earn about trillion dollars did come unfazed by skeptics. Their reason is that these fuel cells are so expensive until they can be produced in mass scale. Although Google are already using them in their headquarters, they are not confident enough to try using it in their servers where their investments are holed up. There are also experts that believe that if this company would unveil that their equipment produces much cheaper alternative source, then it can survive the market race.
Dr. K.R. Sridhar got his Bachelor's Degree in Mechanical Engineering with Honors at the University of Madras in India, as well as his M.S. in Nuclear Engineering. His Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering was finished in University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Apart from being a businessman, Dr. Sridhar is doing work with K-12 children by inspiring them to enjoy math and science. He is currently residing in Los Gatos, California with his wife and two children.
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