Dr. Kris Singh
President & Chief Executive Officer
Dr. Kris Singh is the Founder, President and CEO of Holtec International, which he established in 1986 and nurtured its steady rise into a multi-national company with its business footprint in eighteen countries on five continents. He is also a Professor at the University of South Florida’s (USF) Institute for Advanced Discovery and Innovation where he collaborates with the USF faculty in the areas of advanced thermal storage and efficient harnessing of solar energy.
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 beneficial technological impact on the 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 of the Academy and the University City Science Center (Philadelphia) inducted him into its celebrated “Walk of Fame” on the Penn campus. 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. In 2023, the Nuclear Infrastructure Council (Washington, DC) honored him with its Trailblazers award for his transformative contributions to the commercial nuclear industry. The Florida Inventors’ Hall of fame welcomed him as a 2023 inductee for his prodigious output of societally significant patents. Back in 1987, he was named a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers for his numerous contributions to heat exchange technologies.
Dr. Singh is an overseer of the nuclear engineering department at the University of California, Berkeley, and a senior fellow in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, an advisor to Penn’s College of Engineering and Applied Science and an honorary research professor at University of South Florida’s Institute of Advanced Discovery and Innovation. He is a registered Professional Engineer in Pennsylvania (1974-) and Michigan (1979-) and a member of the American Nuclear Society (1979-).
A widely published author in scientific journals (74 technical papers, one textbook and numerous symposia volumes) and a prolific inventor (170 patents granted in the US plus a large number overseas, many patents pending), Dr. Singh has led Holtec International into the distinguished rank of civilian nuclear industry’s only turnkey supplier in the nuclear and renewable energy sector with four operating manufacturing facilities making Holtec one of the world’s largest provider of custom-engineered equipment and systems. Thanks to its impeccable performance record, Holtec is globally respected for its engineered goods and services with nine major operations centers serving clients on five continents. Over 140 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 globally pre-eminent in the management of used nuclear fuel.
Several national and international codes and standards on pressure vessels and heat exchangers bear the imprint of Dr. Singh’s 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. Under Dr. Singh’s leadership, Holtec is in the vanguard of emerging field and challenges such as cloud-based information management of all Company operations, development of cutting-edge manufacturing processes & machines, devising innovative technologies to decarbonize global economies, and applying Holtec’s innovative below-the-ground interim storage technology to solve America’s used nuclear fuel conundrum.
He is also a passionate sponsor of expedited regulatory acceptance, construction, and commissioning of the Company’s transformative, “walk away safe” small modular reactor, SMR-160+ which (substantially self-funded by the Company) has been in development for over a decade with expected first deployment in 2029.
Ensuring an environmentally safe decommissioning of nuclear units after their shutdown using the Holtec’s Decommissioning Management Model which has been instrumental in enhancing the safety of the Company’s fleet of shuttered plants is of a piece with Dr. Singh’s modus operandi which is to expand the technology envelope in every industrial sector where Holtec operates. His most recent technology endeavor is to repurpose the retiring coal fired plants (instead of demolishing them) by converting them into energy storage and on-demand clean power delivery plants using Holtec’s patented “green boiler technology.” He is also working to integrate the Green Boiler energy storage technology with an advanced solar collection system to help make solar energy a base-load power provider.
An intrepid entrepreneur and a socially conscious industrialist, Dr. Singh built a $312 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 is 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” chaired by the President 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.
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