Subra Suresh

Subra Suresh is President and Distinguished University Professor at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He previously served as: Dean of Engineering and Vannevar Bush Professor at MIT; Director of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF); and President of Carnegie Mellon University.

In recognition of his scientific and applied research into the properties of structural, functional and biological materials, and of its impact on fundamental discoveries, industrial applications, and contributions to the understanding of human health and diseases, Suresh is among a small group of Americans elected to all three branches of the US National Academies – Engineering, Sciences, and Medicine. He has also been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Inventors, and science academies in India, China, France, Germany, Spain, and awarded 18 honorary doctorate degrees. His research has led to several hundred articles, three widely adopted books, 30 patent applications, and a technology start-up. The NSF Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program, conceived and launched by Suresh in 2011, has become one of the most successful programs for translating scientific research into impactful innovations. Within its first six years, I-Corps supported more than 1,200 innovation teams from 248 universities in 47 states and led to the creation of more than 577 companies.

Suresh’s honors include: the 2020 ASME Medal, the 2012 Timoshenko Medal, and the 2011 Nadai Medal from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers; election in 2018 as an Honorary Fellow of St. Hugh’s College at Oxford University; the 2015 Industrial Research Institute Medal; the 2013 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science from the Franklin Institute; the 2011 Padma Shri award, one of the highest civilian honors from the President of India; and the 2007 Gold Medal, the highest honor from the Federation of European Materials Societies, awarded for the first time to a non-European.

A graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Suresh completed his doctorate in Mechanical Engineering at MIT in two years, after his M.S. degree from Iowa State University. He is currently an independent Director of the Board of HP Inc. (HPQ), the Singapore Exchange (SGX), and MatchMove Pay, a FinTech startup.