President & Chief Executive Officer
Dr. Kris Singh is the Founder, President and CEO of Holtec International, headquartered in Jupiter, Florida which he established in 1986 and nurtured its steady rise into a multi-national company with its business footprint in 18 countries on five continents. He is also a Professor at the University of South Florida’s Institute for Advanced Discovery and Innovation where he collaborates with the USF faculty in applied energy technology research.
Dr. Singh received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (1972), a Master of Science in Engineering Mechanics also from Penn (1969), and a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from BIT Sindri (Ranchi University), India (1967). Dr. Singh was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2013 for his seminal impact in the energy sector of mechanical engineering. He received Edison Foundation’s “Thomas Alva Edison Award” in 2015 for his ecologically and environmentally impactful inventions. Rutgers University named him “South Jerseyan of the year – 2016” for his significant beneficial impact on the South Jersey region. In 2015, he received the George Washington medal from the Engineer’s Club of Philadelphia. In 2017, the National Academy of Inventers elected him a Fellow and the University City Science Center (Philadelphia) inducted him into its “Walk of Fame.” The Pan American Academy of Engineering, the Americas’ institution of leading engineering thought leaders, elected Dr. Singh to its Academy in 2020. In 2019, he was elected to the Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine of Florida. He was named a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1987 for his numerous contributions to heat exchange technologies. He is an overseer at the University of California, Berkeley, and a senior fellow in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a registered Professional Engineer in Pennsylvania and Michigan and a member of the American Nuclear Society.
A widely published author in scientific journals (some 70 technical papers, one textbook and numerous symposia volumes) and a prolific inventor (135 patents granted, many pending), Dr. Singh has led Holtec International since the company’s inception, building it into a technological powerhouse globally respected for its engineered goods and services with nine major operations centers on five continents. Over 120 nuclear plants around the world employ Holtec’s systems and equipment, many based on Dr. Singh’s patents. Thanks to the steady stream of design innovations, Holtec is widely held to be pre-eminent in management of used nuclear fuel.
Several national and international codes and standards on pressure vessels and heat exchangers bear the imprint of his applied research. In recent years, Dr. Singh has been leading Holtec in the global race to develop a “walk away safe” small modular reactor to make nuclear energy a cost-competitive clean energy solution for a world struggling with rising carbon emissions.
An intrepid entrepreneur and a socially conscious industrialist, Dr. Singh built a $310 million Technology Campus on the Delaware River in Camden, NJ in 2017 to create much needed employment in one of America’s poorest cities.
Dr. Singh is currently an Emeritus member of the University of Pennsylvania’s Board of Trustees, where he served from 2009-2017, and an active member of the Penn’s Board of Overseers for the School of Engineering and Applied Science . In addition, he serves on the Board of the Nuclear Energy Institute (1998-present), the Atlantic Council, a Washington, DC based think tank, the“National Investment Council” of Ukraine and the Cooper Health System, Camden, NJ. He chairs the KPS Foundation, a charitable Singh family foundation whose signature contribution to the advancement of science is the completion of the “Krishna P. Singh Center for Nanotechnology” at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in 2013. The KPS Foundation is also active in improving child literacy and public health in developing countries.