Ajei Gopal on leadership
From ASME Foundation Excellence in Industry Award: Ajei Gopal · · ASME American Society of Mechanical Engineers
“When I think about leadership and I think about my own style, there are three aspects of it. One is not being insular, but being able to bring the outside in. In other words, I like to collect information that is not just from within an organization, but what people from outside of an organization might be saying.”
On , Ajei Gopal, President, Chief Executive Officer & Director at ANSYS Inc, spoke about leadership during ASME Foundation Excellence in Industry Award: Ajei Gopal on ASME American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
About Ajei Gopal
Ajei Gopal, President and CEO of Ansys, received the ASME Foundation Excellence in Industry Award in May 2025. In accepting the award, Gopal described his leadership style as having three aspects: bringing outside perspectives into the organization, making decisions in a way that engages others, and communicating frequently. He stated that Ansys' mission is "to power innovation that drives human advancements" and highlighted the company's work with NASA and Northrop on the James Webb Telescope. Gopal also discussed a startup called Circleg that uses Ansys software to convert plastic waste into low-cost prosthetics, and expressed support for the ASME Foundation's goal of expanding access to engineering education. In earlier appearances, Gopal has discussed the role of simulation in autonomous vehicle development, stating that validating autonomous cars would require physically driving over eight billion miles and that this "cannot be achieved without the use of simulation." He noted that Ansys is working with BMW to develop a simulation tool chain for testing autonomous driving systems. Gopal has also described simulation as "our superpower" and said that multiphysics simulation gives engineers the ability to "see inside a product and instantly grasp the physics behind it." He has characterized the fourth Industrial Revolution as involving the integration of digital technologies into industries such as automotive, and has said that the cloud is making simulation more accessible, particularly as engineers work from home.