Prakash Kumar Karunakaran

Prakash Kumar Karunakaran is the Head of NervCentre, a group responsible for driving digital transformation in PETRONAS's plant, facilities, and projects space.  As head of NervCentre (or NC), he is responsible for the development and deployment of several techno-digital initiatives, including the award-winning PETRONAS Digital Twin project, the Remote and Autonomous Operations (or RAO) initiative, the “Wizard” Project and another award-winning project called “Project Aries”, a project which has successfully showcased the convergence of engineering and digital and brought sustainable & auditable value to the company. Previously, Prakash was the Group Technical Authority in PETRONAS, leading the charge for the Advanced Process Control discipline (a discipline that develops online data-based optimisation models for plants).  Prakash has spent more than 30 years in the Oil and Gas Industry with substantial field experience in several operating facilities.