Subra Suresh

Subra Suresh is the Director of National Science Foundation (NSF) and former Dean of Engineering and the Vannevar Bush Professor of Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He began his tenure as Dean in July, 2007, and holds faculty appointments in Materials Science and Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Biological Engineering, and Health Sciences and Technology at MIT. Dr. Suresh was nominated by US President Obama to be the Director of the National Science Foundation.

The former head of MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Suresh’s research focuses on: nanomechanics of biological cells and molecules, and human disease states; structure-mechanical property-disease connections in the context of p. falciparum malaria, hereditary blood cell disorders and cancer; computational simulations of cellular and molecular deformation and shape thermodynamics; high force optical tweezers studies of biological cells and human disease states; nanostructured materials; nanoindentation and microindentation.

Suresh is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and his many honors and awards include the 2007 European Materials Medal, the highest honor conferred by the Federation of European Materials Societies and he was the first scientist based outside Europe to receive the award. In 2006, he received the Acta Materialia Gold Medal and Technology Review magazine selected his work on nanobiomechanics as one of the top 10 emerging technologies that "will have a significant impact on business, medicine or culture."

Suresh is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; the Indian National Academy of Engineering; the Academy of Sciences of the Developing World, TWAS, Trieste, Italy; and the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. He is an honorary fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore, and an honorary member of the Spanish Royal Academy of Sciences. He has been elected a fellow or honorary fellow by all major materials societies in the U.S. and India, including the Materials Research Society, the American Society for Materials International; The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society; the American Society of Mechanical Engineers; the American Ceramic Society; the Indian Institute of Metals; and the Materials Research Society of India.

Publications/Patents

Suresh is the author of over 210 research articles in international journals, co-editor of five books, and co-inventor on fourteen U.S. and international patents. More than 100 students, post-doctoral associates, and research scientists who trained in his group occupy prominent positions in academe, industry, and government throughout the world. He has authored or co-authored three books: Fatigue of Materials, Fundamentals of Functionally Graded Materials, and Thin Film Materials.

Education

• Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (BTech)
• Iowa State University (MS)
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology (ScD)

External links

• MIT School of Engineering (http://engineering.mit.edu)
• The Suresh Research Group (http://sureshgroup.mit.edu)