Indo-American Elected To Top US National Academy

WASHINGTON – Indo-American Subra Suresh, currentlypresident of CarnegieMellon University, has beenelected as a member of theprestigious Institute of Medicine(IOM), becoming the onlycurrent university president tobe elected to all three nationalacademies.Suresh, who earlier servedas director of National ScienceFoundation (NSF), a $7-billionindependent governmentscience agency charged withadvancing all fields of fundamentalscience, engineering researchand education, is one ofthe only 16 living Americans tobe elected to all three nationalacademies (IOM, the NationalAcademy of Sciences and theNational Academy of Engineering).Election to a NationalAcademy is among the highestprofessional distinctions accordedto engineers, scientistsand medical and health professionals.Academy membership honoursthose who have made outstandingcontributions to theirfields. The IOM recognizedSuresh for advancing health andmedicine through his researchinto cell mechanics related tomalaria, blood diseases and certaintypes of cancer, a media releasesaid.“CMU’s new president istruly a scientist and educationalleader for our time,” wrote RayLane, partner emeritus at KleinerPerkins Caufield & Byers andchairman of Carnegie Mellon’sBoard of Trustees, in an emailto the CMU global community.“He embodies, through hisindividual scholarship as well asinstitutional, national and globalleadership, Carnegie Mellon’scommitment to cross boundariesto transform lives,” Lanesaid.Suresh is the first CMU facultymember to hold membershipin all three academies.In addition to the three USNational Academies, Suresh hasbeen elected to the AmericanAcademy of Arts and Sciences,Spanish Royal Academy of Sciences,Spanish Royal Academyof Engineering, German NationalAcademy of Sciences,Royal Swedish Academy ofEngineering Sciences, Academyof Sciences of the DevelopingWorld, Indian National Academyof Engineering, IndianNational Science Academy, andIndian Academy of Sciences.He has been elected a fellowor honorary member of all themajor materials research societiesin the US and India.