About Us

President, CEO

Burak Ozturk, PhD

Dr. Burak Ozturk leads Xccelerate AI’s business and strategy development while providing inspired leadership company wide. He oversees company operations, building a highly inclusive culture and collaborative environment. 

Burak is Executive Chairman and co-founder at VIAS. He previously worked as a Group Technology and Advanced Engineering Director at Wood Group Kenny prior to starting VIAS. Burak has over 10 years of experience in the Offshore Industry with a strong technical background in pipeline and riser design, thermal-fluid sciences, structural design and analysis, mechanical components design and FEA / CFD. 

In addition, Burak is an Adjunct Associate Professor at The University of Houston, and offers a Pipeline Design course offered through the Mechanical Engineering Department. He is a Fellow at IMarEST and a member of ASME since 2003 where he is serving an acting executive member of the ASME PSD since October 2013. Burak holds some twenty five conference and journal publications, and is an expert in his field. 

CTO

Kaan Inal, PhD

Dr. Kaan Inal leads Xccelerate AI’s technology development, responsible for strategy and driving innovation from the lab to industry. He oversees the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and applications of AI to perform industrially-relevant simulations with advanced physics-based models. 

Kaan is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering at the University of Waterloo, where he focuses on multi-scale modeling and development of mechanism driven advanced material models for metals and composites.  Accordingly, Dr. Inal has applied multiscale frameworks for several new and emerging materials to enable their applications for structural lightweighting.  

Kaan holds advanced Engineering degrees including a Ph.D. from the University of Sherbrooke. He has co-authored more than 80 research articles and book chapters and has held visiting professorships at University of Pennsylvania and Georgia Institute of Technology. He was also a visiting scientist at the General Motors Canadian Regional Engineering Center (2014) where he participated in various projects on lightweighting.  

Director, Product Development

Craig Metcalfe, PhD

Dr. Craig Metcalfe is responsible for leading Xccelerate AI’s product development efforts, integrating engineering simulations and artificial intelligence to meet the needs of engineers and organizations in the Consumer Electronics, Consumer Packaged Goods, and Transportation & Mobility Industries. 

Craig has over 19 years of experience working in advanced technology development, entrepreneurship, and consulting. These include technical expert roles at General Motors and Quantiam Technologies and entrepreneurial leadership roles driving technology innovation efforts for three co-founded high-tech start-ups. He has over a decade of experience consulting on advanced manufacturing projects with a proven track record of advancing innovative products and services from concept through commercialization. 

Craig holds advanced degrees in Mechanical Engineering including an M.A.Sc. from the University of British Columbia and a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto and is a registered Professional Engineer in the province of British Columbia. Craig serves on the board of AI 4 Manufacturing Canada, which is a not-for-profit organization taking a leadership role in educating manufacturers and technology companies on how to best adopt artificial intelligence. Craig enjoys spending time with his three kids camping, making gadgets, and observing the night sky. 

Director, Strategic Alliances & Partnerships

Justin Gammage, PhD

Dr. Justin Gammage is responsible for business development and developing and managing strategic alliances and partnerships at Xccelerate AI.  

Justin holds the role of Senior Executive Advisor Strategic Research Priorities and Industry Collaborations for the Vice President of Research and Innovation at Ontario Tech University.  He also serves as the Manager for Durham’s Ontario Vehicle Innovation Network Technology Development Site activities at Ontario Tech University. In these roles he leads the institution’s industry outreach and creates industry driven research programs with leading faculty and research labs.  Among these labs is the Automotive Centre of Excellence (ACE), Canada’s most sophisticated full scale automotive research facility. 

Prior to joining Ontario Tech in 2015, Justin spent 14 years working in the automotive industry in assignments that included both production, product and validation engineering.  Most recently, as Chief Scientist for General Motors of Canada, Justin was responsible for developing and managing a broad portfolio of innovation projects with leading experts and faculty from Universities across Canada.   

Justin holds a Ph.D. from McMaster University and is a registered Professional Engineer in the Province of Ontario. In his spare time he enjoys spending time with family and friends on the Great Lakes as a boating and sailing enthusiast. He is also an advocate for STEM education outreach and is a proud supporter of organizations supporting Females in Engineering and STEM. 

Director, Strategy

Sumanth Kumar

Sumanth has 25 years of Industry experience most of which has been with Dassault Systemes.  He started as an application engineer and took on many roles including onsite program manager at P&G, Sales Manager & Central region general manager in US.  Sumanth then relocated to Singapore to manage Asia pacific business and strategic accounts. In 2013, he relocated back to US to take on SIMULIA’s VP of strategy, marketing and market development teams and was part of SIMULIA Exec team until 2019.  In this role, Sumanth had the privilege of spearheading acquisition of 9 simulation companies and his organization started many strategic initiatives including Additive Manufacturing and the Living Heart project among others.  Sumanth joined VIAS3D as COO in early 2020 and helped develop and diversify VIAS3D as a multinational platinum partner of DS. 

Sumanth holds a Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Ohio State University and an MBA from Purdue’s Krannert School of Management. 

Director, Industry Applications

Arindam Chakraborty, PhD

Dr. Arindam Chakraborty is currently responsible for identifying industry applications where solving physics-based problems can benefit from a phased deployment of AI/ML-based tools to improve efficiency while maintaining product quality and safety.  

For more than 15 years Arindam has been involved with academic research and technical consulting in energy, life science, hi-tech, automotive, and other industries. He is actively involved with many industry professional committees and regulatory bodies. Arindam focuses on helping companies strategize their successful adoption of a simulation first approach along with developing digital twin models for reliability and lifecycle management. 

Arindam holds a Masters degree in Aerospace Engineering and PhD is Mechanical Engineering with a focus in Fracture Mechanics and Stochastic Modeling. In his spare time, Arindam enjoys reading and spending quality time with his kids. 

Sales Director

Vikram Dhruva

Vikram leads Xccelerate AI’s sales efforts, working to provide high value to our customers. 

Vikram is a Managing Member and Director of Scientific Simulation Sales at Vias3D. He has more than 20 years of experience in Applied Mechanics, Design, non-linear FEA (Implicit & Explicit), Fatigue, Durability, Reliability, and Fluid Structural Interaction simulations in Automotive, Aerospace, Industrial Equipment, Life Science, High-Tech, and Energy industry. At Dassault Systemes Simulia Corp, Vikram managed the North American and Latin American simulation sales business initiatives. He has recruited more than 50 partners in the Americas and enabled them to sell the simulation and to provide local support. He has taught many advanced simulation classes and was part of the advanced class development team within Dassault Systemes during his initial time at Simulia. 

Vikram completed a Bachelor in Civil Engineering from LE College, Gujarat, and a Master of Engineering from LD Engineering College, Gujarat with a master’s thesis in Artificial Neural Network in 1999. Vikram migrated to the USA in 2000 and completed a Master of Science from the University of Akron with a focus on Bird strike analysis of the airplane radome using LsDyna. Vikram also holds MBA from Purdue University.  

Vikram manages a small real estate portfolio and enjoys complex real estate projects building single-family homes to multifamily condominiums in his spare time.