Sitdown with Success: Ashok Singhal of CFD Research
Sitdown with Success is a feature of the Huntsville Business Journal on entrepreneurs and their keys to success. Our July subject is Ashok Singhal, founder of CFD Research.
According to the textbooks, computational fluid dynamics uses complex computer algorithms for modeling and simulating the flow of fluids, gases, heat, and electric currents to make technological advances in almost all industrial sectors, but especially in aeronautics, automobiles, and space.
Ashok Singhal started CFD Research in the basement of his Huntsville home in 1987.
Today, in addition to the headquarters in Cummings Research Park, Singhal’s company just broke ground on a 13,265 square-foot laboratory that will expand its research and development capabilities in biomedicine and energy, while providing space to support growth in electronics, virology, and biomechanics.
Recently, CFD opened a 13,000 square-foot engineering test center in Hollywood, outside of Scottsboro, for propulsion testing and hypersonic ground test support.
What is it like to start a company in the basement of your home?
It was genuinely in the basement.
In 1986, I resigned from my previous position with another company owned by and run by a well renowned and famous professor from Imperial College in London. He got me into computational fluid dynamics.
In the beginning, we were very poor. We had one idea and one IBM clone computer that cost $1000. We could have used hundreds of computers, but we couldn’t afford them.
Two things happened in the basement. My son Sameer (now the company CEO) made our first business sign that said CFD Research Corporation using a dot matrix printer and he hung it on the wall.
In 1987, you bought everything from Service Merchandise because it was moderately priced. We bought these furniture kits and Sameer and his twin brother formed an assembly line to put together the office furniture. It was free labor.
My wife Sangeeta typed every proposal I could scribble down and she coordinated with a draftsman to get a company logo.
Did you ever expect it to get this big?
Yes, and so much more. We’re not done yet.
In my head it was always the case. Even though we are computer nerds – computational dynamics is a hardcore science for computer simulations, but I always wanted to expand the company to do more than fluid simulations, structural controls, and everything multidisciplinary; but I always wanted to do experiments. The growth in that direction was slow and gradual and has been a consistent journey over 20 years.
What would you say is the secret to your success?
Sangeeta, my wife is the true secret to the success of this company, and I mean every word of it, honestly.
She has several intrinsic characteristics. She is a very intuitive person, perceptive, and open-minded. She is also very caring and very giving.
Not only did she write all my proposals for many years, but she took on other responsibilities for her crazy scientist husband. She allowed me to start the business with two 10-year-old boys and no medical insurance.
As we in her words, continued to go crazy from one field to another field to another, she understood the passion and her resolution allowed me to sleep peacefully through it all.
She is the best money manager in the whole world.
We moved out of the basement and into a tiny place on Bob Wallace with two or three rooms because Sangeeta found it cheap. She shared an office with somebody, and it was generally very humbling and modest with no borrowed money from the bank.
I am a technical person and banking is not, so I did not want to go to the bank and Sangeeta said, ‘Do you want me to go?’
She had to explain what we do in plain English, and I never could have done that, but she came away with a credit line for 25k to 50k.
She was also the key to Sameer and his family moving here from North Carolina and Sameer taking over as CEO.
What have been your biggest challenges?
My biggest challenge in the business overall is championing new technologies, breaking the barriers whereby people don’t believe you. That is very challenging.
Now my biggest challenge, and I am proud of it, is for the last 6 years, not to come to any meetings. My job is to stay out of the way. I don’t sit in the management meetings because even my shadow distracts. Even if I am not going to speak, but just sit and listen, people look at you and wonder what are you thinking, or what would you have done? And that changes the whole dynamics of the business.
Even though I am no longer active, Sameer and his team are doing a phenomenal job and they will do the next round of growth.
What are some milestones you think changed the dynamics of the company?
Our first big thing was a $2,000 IBM clone computer.
If you worked for a large company and bought an IBM clone computer and your computational decision did not work out, you would be fired. In a small company like ours, it was a very easy decision because it was the only thing we could afford – the cheapest box you could buy.
Today, we have a few hundred clusters of computers and honestly, for us, we can never have enough computers, especially if you do more than fluid like us. We are doing biology, chemistry and biochemistry and we are very disciplined and exploratory.

Ashok Singhal: “The first thing you have to do is open your mind. It is a rare entity, common sense. It takes persistence and patience, patience, patience, and more patience.” (Photo/Steve Babin)
But also, in the early days of the company, I sat before six managers at the Chrysler Corporation, and I could tell they saw what I was going to present to them as mumbo jumbo. I don’t know anything about car mechanics, and they asked me whether I knew how many components there are under the hood of a car. I guessed 50. It was over 400. They were not impressed.
I showed them a picture of an airplane and pointed out that the government, by way of billions of dollars in taxpayer money, has had the backs of the aerospace industry for decades. But in the car industry, which was primarily American brands back then, the government does not and cannot have their back. And if they (automakers) didn’t wake up and adopt new ways that are 100 times cheaper, faster, more efficient, and better, they have a window of five to 10 years before, in my humble opinion, their market shares would start to slip.
We got a contract, and it was the first of several car manufacturers we have worked with.
The third is the decision to get into biomedical.
Thirty years ago, I got pulled into biomedical after meeting with six heart surgeons at UAB in Birmingham. I had some personal issues and needed some tests. But I have a very curious mind and I kept asking a lot of questions about these electrocardiograms they were going over.
I gave a seminar to these six surgeons and, in exchange, I requested to watch them perform an open-heart surgery. One of them let me but I was kicked out two minutes in because as soon as I saw the cut and the blood, I felt faint.
On my way home, I stopped in Cullman for a cup of coffee and went over in my head whether I wanted to get into biomed or not.
In the aerospace industry, our work can only move the efficiency needle about a half a percent and that is a big deal, saving the client billions of dollars.
Medical is a Stone Age practice. I realized I could make a difference of 300 to 400 percent compared to a half percent.
Today, half of CFD’s work is in aerospace, defense, and automobile. The other half is biomedical.
How do you handle being in a business most people don’t understand?
When I started the company in 1987, I never spelled out the words Computational Fluid Dynamics. Those who know what it is will appreciate it. Those who don’t know what it is, won’t get it and it won’t matter anyway.
In the first five to six years of my initial growth, I was going to government agencies to see if I could entertain some good ideas and I wound up in Washington at the National Science Foundation. I was talking to the program manager, and she asked, ‘What does CFD mean?’

Ashok Singhal: “At CFD Research, you don’t need permission from your manager to pursue an idea you think will work.” (Photo/Steve Babin)
Out of habit, I said Charlie Frank David. That is how I explained it to myself, because I wanted to do much more than just computational dynamics.
She said, ‘Then why not Cynthia Francis Doris?’
I said ‘yes ma’am.’ At least I knew she was listening!
The hardest thing I do is convincing people and championing new technologies.
To solve the problem, you’re saying you have a shot at looking at things objectively and coming up with some ideas – some of them may work, some of them may not work, but you’re here to test them experimentally through computer simulation, and to explore possibilities not allowed in the conventional world.
People believe an experiment because it is something you can see, but not everybody believes computer simulations because it is something you cannot see. Even if you use pretty, colorful pictures … there is a lot of skepticism.
The first thing you have to do is open your mind. It is a rare entity, common sense. It takes persistence and patience, patience, patience, and more patience.
What do you think makes CFD Research special?
My whole 42 years in Huntsville and in the United States has been driven by one passion – championing the new technologies, new ideas – meaning they are not found in the mainstream of business, and nobody believes them.
Exploring new ideas and finding and doing things which have not been done before, is really my addiction. We have 75 to 80 patents but that is not it. We have 100+ publication or papers, but that is not it.
When I came here in 1978, before I started the company, Microsoft was hardly bought. Their Word software was a joke. It was not well understood, and it took five to 10 years for them to be accepted.
I saw the glimmer of hope and confidence in many young scientist’s eyes coming out of Stanford, MIT, or Penn State who want to do something meaningful rather than just fill out the forms. We want to make an impact and there are very few places which will allow you the flexibility to explore your ideas.
If you do fail in the computer world nothing happens, the computer is not going to blow. If you want to simulate some dangerous chemical nuclear experiment, it is not going to blow up anything.
In the average company, you would never be allowed by management to pursue your ideas because they would be dismissed as too stupid or too far out of the range.
At CFD Research, you don’t need permission from your manager to pursue an idea you think will work.
Test it.
If it works, share it.
If it fails, test another idea or as many ideas as you want and share as many as you want with your sponsor or customer.
If something comes out positive, brag about it.