About
Dinesh Kumar is a systems thinker and service designer with over a decade of experience working across the industry. His practice focuses on designing systems, services, and learning experiences that respond to real-world contexts. He has led end-to-end service design projects across manufacturing, mobility and defence sectors, translating user insights into integrated digital and physical experiences.
He currently serves as Associate Professor and Head of the Centre for Design, Values and Public Imagination at RV University, where he works on socially complex challenges such as biodiversity loss, human-animal conflict and science communication. His teaching approach emphasises inquiry, play, and hands-on engagement, encouraging learners to work with complexity and ambiguity.
Dinesh is also the founder and host of the Innocence Theory Podcast(Supported by Swissnex, Consulate of Switzerland), where he explores the role of design in addressing climate-related challenges through conversations with scientists, conservationists, and practitioners.
When nobody is watching, Dinesh likes to scale walls and climb trees.
AI-Enabled Transdisciplinary Observability Framework for Biodiversity and Human Environment Systems.
Early Detection of Biodiversity Stress Signals Across Siloed Health, Ecology, Agriculture and Climate Systems.
AI-Driven Conversion of Voice, Image, Sensor and Text Reports into a Shared Cross-Domain Data Format.
Research Interests
Role of play in learning
Design for science communication
Social structures and their relationships to human behaviour
Awarded a C2A grant by Swissnex, Consulate of Switzerland, for the Innocence Theory Podcast - That explores the role of design in science communication.
Associate Professor
School of Design and Innovation
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Bengaluru
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