Sunil Kumar, the Fred H. Merrill Professor of Operations, Information and Technology and an expert in Operations Research at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, has been appointed the next dean of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
Kumar is currently the Stanford Business School’s Senior Associate Dean for academic affairs. His five-year term as dean at Chicago Booth will begin on January 1, 2011.

“I am excited to become dean of Chicago Booth,” Kumar said. “I share the school’s passion for the pursuit of ideas that hold up under careful scrutiny. I look forward to helping strengthen and enhance Booth’s outstanding research environment and its rigorous, discipline-based approach to business education.” Kumar joined the Stanford faculty in 1996 after receiving his PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. At Stanford he taught courses in Operations Management, Technology, Critical Analytical Thinking and Revenue Management.
Born in India, Kumar received a Master of Engineering degree in Computer Science and Automation from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore and a Bachelor of Engineering degree from Mangalore University in Surathkal.