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President Nominates New NSF Director

President Obama has announced the nomination of Subra Suresh as Director of the National Science Foundation. Dr. Suresh will undergo a Senate confirmation process in the coming weeks. A copy of Dr. Suresh’s biography follows.

Subra Suresh, Nominee for Director, National Science Foundation Subra Suresh is currently Dean of the School of Engineering and the Vannevar Bush Professor of Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).  From 2000 to 2006, Dr. Suresh served as the head of the MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering.  He joined MIT in 1993 as the R.P. Simmons Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and since then has held joint faculty appointments in the Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Biological Engineering, as well as the Division of Health Sciences and Technology.  From 1983 to 1993, Dr. Suresh was a faculty member in the Division of Engineering at Brown University.  He has been elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Indian National Academy of Engineering, the Indian Academy of Sciences in Bangalore, the Royal Spanish Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Sciences of the Developing World based in Trieste, Italy, and the German National Academy of Sciences.  Dr. Suresh is the recipient of the 2007 European Materials Medal, the highest honor conferred by the Federation of European Materials Societies, and the 2006 Acta Materialia Gold Medal.  He holds a bachelor’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras, an M.S. from Iowa State University, and a Sc.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  Dr. Suresh also holds honorary doctorate degrees from the Technical University of Madrid in Spain and Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.