Ranganathan Kumar serves as the associate dean for research and administration for the College of Engineering and Computer Science at UCF. He received his Ph.D. in theoretical and applied mechanics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1983, and his M.S. in aerospace engineering in 1978. He has had previous experiences at Clemson University (1983-1993) and Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory (1993-2003). He joined UCF as chair of the Department of Mechanical, Materials and Aerospace Engineering in 2003 and served in that capacity until 2008.

He has supervised/graduated nearly 50 graduate students including 20 Ph.D. students. He has written over 200 technical articles of archival quality. His research has been highly cited and funded by the National Science Foundation, NASA, the Department of Energy, the Air Force Research Laboratory, the State of Florida and industries.

He is a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineering. He has chaired ASME committees on heat transfer in environmental systems, and long range planning and development. He is a reviewer for several journals, and a panel member for proposal evaluation at the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy and the American Association of Advancement in Science. He currently serves as an associate editor of ASME Journal of Thermal Sciences and Engineering Applications, and also as editorial board member of a nature publication, Scientific Reports.