Prith Banerjee: Mastering the Art of Tech

Meet Prith Banerjee, the CTO of ANSYS, a leading engineering modeling and simulation company. ANSYS helps customers design and simulate innovative products in automotive, aerospace, energy, high-tech, and healthcare industries. For over half a century, Ansys software has enabled innovators across industries to push boundaries by using the predictive power of simulation. Now, under Prith’s leadership, ANSYS continues to pioneer technological advancements that have far-reaching implications for numerous sectors.

Before joining ANSYS, Prith served as the CTO of Schneider Electric, CTO of ABB, Managing Director of R&D at Accenture, and Director of HP Labs. Previously, he has spent nearly two decades in academia as a Professor, Chairman, and Dean at the University of Illinois and Northwestern University. His passion for innovation also led him to establish two companies, namely AccelChip and Binachip.

Additionally, he has served on the Board of Cray, CUBIC, Turntide, and Anita Borg Institute, and the Technical Advisory Boards of Ambit, Atrenta, Calypto, Cypress, Ingram Micro, Virsec, and Ampere. He has also authored over 350 papers and a book named INNOVATION FACTORY.

Prith pursued his B.Tech. in electronics engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana.

Five Technology Pillars

As the CTO of Ansys, Prith has identified five technology pillars to grow simulation, including,

• Advanced numerical methods, such as finite element and finite volume methods,
• High-performance computing, such as shared memory, message-passing, and GPUs
• Artificial intelligence and machine learning to accelerate Ansys’s solvers and provide automatic solver settings
• Cloud, platforms and user experience, allowing all Ansys’s solvers to run efficiently on the cloud, and a platform to create simulation applications and workflows,
• Digital engineering by using technologies such as model-based systems engineering and digital twins.

Prith and his team are now planning to leverage these technologies to help Ansys’s clients get a more accurate, faster, easy-to-use, and robust simulation that allows them to design products faster, cheaper, and more reliable.

Powering Innovation

With a mission to drive innovation that propels human achievement to new heights, Ansys hopes to shape the future across various domains, from sustainable transportation to advanced semiconductors, from satellite systems to life-saving medical devices. With Prith leading the technology directions at Ansys, the organization aspires to power the next great leap in human advancement with its technology and solutions.

To align with this mission, Ansys has created five technology pillars that serve as the foundation of the organization’s journey;

• The advanced numerical methods are developing solver methods to be more accurate, faster, easy to use, and robust.
• High-performance computing will allow Ansys’s customers to run the solvers faster and solve larger problem sizes.
• AI/ML will allow its solvers to run quicker and be much easier to use with automatic solver settings.
• Cloud and platform will allow Ansys’s solvers to run efficiently and scalably on the cloud.
• Digital engineering will enable customers to provide high-level system-level requirements for a product and automatically design, verify, and validate the product.

Fostering Growth and Creativity

Under Prith’s visionary leadership, ANSYS has embarked on a journey to foster innovation within its business units through a series of proactive initiatives. At first, Prith and his team created various Centers of Excellence around areas such as Numerical Methods, HPC, and AI/ML to allow cross-business unit innovation along these technology areas. Secondly, they organize an annual 3-day Ansys internal conference called TECHCON, where more than 300 top R&D developers gather to discuss their latest technical innovations with their colleagues. Thirdly, Prith organizes biweekly TECHTALKS on technical areas of innovation featuring both external and internal speakers. These technical talks delve deep into areas of innovation, providing employees with valuable insights, ideas, and perspectives. These sessions offer inspiration and education, helping ANSYS employees stay abreast of the latest trends and developments in their field. Finally, they host the annual CEO Innovation Awards, which acknowledges and honors the best in product, technical, and solutions innovation.

Looking at the Future

Under Prith’s visionary leadership, Ansys plans to delight its clients by powering innovation that drives human achievement. He plans to do this by driving innovation in Ansys’s products, sales, marketing, and business models. He also hopes to grow the organization’s business, using more products, users, and compute.

Suggestions for Younger Self

Prith suggests people looking to pursue a career in technology to always willing to learn new technologies. Technology is all about learning new things, and Prith learned several technologies during his days at the University of Illinois. However, to stay relevant and contribute meaningfully to the field Prith understood the need for continuous learning and adaptation. So, he extended his skills by learning several new technologies around AI/ML, HPC, digital twins, big data analytics, cloud, and others.

“I have had the pleasure of working in innovation in academia at the University of Illinois and Northwestern, innovation in two startups, Accelchip and Binachip, and innovation in large companies like HP, ABB, Schneider Electric, Accenture, and Ansys. I have taken my experiences and written a book called INNOVATION FACTORY. I would like to share my experience with junior people at Ansys and other companies about how to support long-term disruptive innovation in various industries,”– Prith concludes.