Dr. K. Venkatesh Prasad, who goes by Prasad, serves as the Senior Vice President of Research and Chief Innovation Officer (CINO) at the Center for Automotive Research.

Prasad comes to CAR after a 26+ year career at Ford Motor Company. During his tenure at Ford, he held a broad range of leadership roles in R&D and innovation acceleration across Ford’s global Vehicle Components & Systems Engineering organization, and most recently in Corporate Strategy. During that time, he co-founded and led Ford’s Silicon Valley Labs in Palo Alto, California.

Prior to joining Ford, Prasad was a Senior Research Scientist at the Ricoh California Research Center. Prasad earned his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Rutgers University and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Washington State University, both with an emphasis in computer engineering.  He earned an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the IIT Madras, and a B.E. in Electronics and Communications Engineering from NIT Trichy, University of Madras, where he received a distinguished alum award.