Subra Suresh

MIT news announced on , June 14, that Professor Subra Suresh, the Ford Professor of Engineering at MIT, will succeed Professor Thomas Magnanti as the next dean of the School of Engineering. Suresh will assume his new leadership role July 23.A 1977 graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras, Suresh received a master's from Iowa State University in 1979 before pursuing doctoral studies at MIT, where he received the Sc.D. in 1981. After two years of postdoctoral research at the University of California at Berkeley, he joined the faculty at Brown University, where he rose to the rank of professor of engineering in 1989 before returning to the MIT in 1993 as the R.P. Simmons Professor. He was awarded the IIT Distinguished Alumni Award in 1997.Suresh, who served as head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE) from 2000 to 2006.Suresh holds faculty appointments in DMSE, mechanical engineering, biological engineering and the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST). He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.As head of DMSE, Suresh helped recruit nearly a third of the faculty members currently in the department and was instrumental in launching new laboratories along the Infinite Corridor as well as educational and research programs that include a new undergraduate curriculum and a new M.Eng. degree program. Working closely with the Department of Physics, he played a key role in the launch of a building project known as PDSI, whose renovations and new construction for Physics, DMSE, the Spectroscopy Laboratory and infrastructure are now nearing completion.Suresh is a strong proponent of innovative international collaborations in teaching and research. He was the founding chair of the Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA) Program on Advanced Materials and is the founding director of the Global Enterprise for Micromechanics and Molecular Medicine (GEM4), which brings together 14 participating institutions from the United States and a number of foreign countries.Suresh's own current research focuses on experimental and computational studies of the mechanical responses of single biological cells and molecules and their implications for human health and diseases. His prior and ongoing work has also led to seminal contributions in the area of nano- and micro-scale mechanical properties of engineered materials.His many awards and honors include election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and academies of engineering and/or science based in Germany, India, Italy and Spain. Last year, he received the Acta Materialia Gold Medal for "pioneering research" into the mechanical properties of materials and was selected by MIT's Technology Review magazine for its TR10 list as one of the 10 scientists whose research will have "a significant impact on business, medicine or culture" in the years ahead.Suresh is the recipient of the 2007 European Materials Medal from the Federation of European Materials Societies. He is the first scientist based outside Europe to receive the award. Suresh will receive a gold medal and deliver a plenary lecture to materials scientists and engineers on the opening day of Euromat 2007, the official meeting of FEMS, to be held in Nuremburg, Germany, in September 2007.Only last month Suresh led an international research team that discovered the gene for a parasite protein that could lead to treatment for malaria.Suresh, who holds appointments in materials science and engineering, biological engineering, mechanical engineering and the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, has been studying the mechanics of red blood cells and the effects of malaria on those cells for several years.