Mr Suresh (Prof. Suresh) joined the SGX Board on 20 September 2018.

Prof. Suresh is an eminent American scientist, engineer and entrepreneur with decades of distinguished and impactful leadership in academia, industry and government. He was appointed president of NTU in July 2017 and began his tenure on 1st January 2018.

He was the 9th President of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) from 2013 to 2017. Before that, he served as Director of the US National Science Foundation (NSF) from 2010 to 2013, and Dean of the School of Engineering and Vannevar Bush Professor of Engineering from 2007 to 2010 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he was a faculty member for two decades.

Prof Suresh’s research in materials science and engineering, mechanics and biomedicine has helped to shape disciplines and technologies at the intersections of engineering, science and medicine. In recognition of his stellar academic achievements, the NTU Board of Trustees appointed him the inaugural Distinguished University Professor. Newly set up in 2017, this Professorship is awarded for extraordinary scholarly achievement, typically across multiple disciplinary boundaries, and it is the highest academic recognition at NTU.

Prof Suresh was nominated by former United States President Barack Obama in 2010 to lead the US National Science Foundation as Director. He was unanimously confirmed by the US Senate.

He has served as a consultant to the National Science and Technology Board and the Advisory Boards or Councils of institutes under the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore’s lead public agency that drives research to advance discovery and innovation, and other government bodies. He was also on the Boards of several faculties within the National University of Singapore (NUS), where he was the inaugural Tan Chin Tuan Centennial Chair from 2006 to 2010.

Prof Suresh was the principal faculty from MIT who led the formation of the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), established in 2007 as the first centre in Singapore’s international research campus and innovation hub, the National Research Foundation’s Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE). In this capacity, he worked closely with the MIT and Singapore research communities, and crystallised and presented the vision for the SMART centre and its role in the CREATE campus in July 2006 to the Research, Innovation and Enterprise Council (RIEC), chaired by Singapore’s Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong.

Prof Suresh is currently an independent Director of HP Inc, California. He is also a member of the Science, Technology and Innovation Council appointed by the CEO of the Munich-based multinational company, Siemens AG, and a Senior Adviser to Singapore’s Temasek International Pte Ltd. He has previously served as a Director of LORD Corporation (a North Carolina-based private company offering technology products and services around the globe) and several nonprofit organisations in the US and overseas.

In recognition of his “outstanding accomplishments in technological innovations that contribute broadly to the development of industry and benefit society”, the Industrial Research Institute (IRI) selected Prof Suresh for its highest honour, the IRI Medal, in 2015.

Prof Suresh holds the distinction of being the only university president elected to all three US national academics of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. He has also been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Inventors.

He is an elected member of 16 science and/or engineering academies based in the US, China, France, India, Sweden, Germany, Italy, Singapore and Spain. He has 15 honorary doctorates from universities around the world including Zhejiang University (China), Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland), Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden), Warwick University (UK), St Petersburg Polytechnic University (Russia), Dartmouth College (USA) and his alma mater, the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.

He was also chosen by Science Watch/Thomson Reuters as one of the top 100 most impactful materials scientists (based on publication citation impact) during the decade 2000-2010. In 2011, he was awarded the Padma Shri, one of the highest civilian honours, by the President of India.