Subra Suresh, President of the Global Learning Council and Vannevar Bush Professor of Engineering Emeritus at MIT, served as the Director of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), a position to which he was nominated by President Barack Obama and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate. He has also served as the President of Carnegie Mellon University and Nanyang Technological University Singapore, and as Dean of the School of Engineering at MIT and Professor of Engineering at Brown University.
Suresh is amongst a rare group of scholars elected to all three of the U.S. National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine for his scientific discoveries and pioneering research into the properties of engineered and biological materials, and their implications for human diseases and technologies. He has also been elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Inventors, and a foreign member of eleven other major science and engineering academies. Suresh has authored three books, more than 300 research articles, and 30 patent applications, and has co¬founded two technology start-ups. He is widely credited with establishing the NSF Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program and the Global Research Council while serving as the Director of NSF. He has been awarded 20 honorary doctorate degrees from prestigious institutions around the world, the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Mechanical Engineering from the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, and the Padma Shri, one of the highest civilian honors from the President of India.
