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Indian-American academician Subra Suresh has been confirmed 'unanimously' by the US Senate to be the next director of the $7.4 billion National Science Foundation for a six-year term.
President Barack Obama nominated Suresh, dean of the School of Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to the post in June this year. The US Senate confirmed the appointment on Thursday.
He is likely to be sworn in by Obama's Science Adviser and director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy John Holdren in the next two weeks. The confirmation makes Suresh one of the highest-ranking Indian-Americans ever to serve in an administration.
As director, Suresh will lead the $7.4 billion independent federal agency that supports all fields of science and engineering research, as well as a wide span of educational programmes that reach more than 2,000 institutions across the US and involve approximately 200,000 educators, researchers and students.
Virginia-headquartered NSF funding accounts for more than half of all non-medical science and engineering basic research at American academic institutions.
Currently on sabbatical leave from MIT, Suresh will step down effective immediately as dean of the School of Engineering. Professor Cynthia Barnhart, Ford Professor of Engineering, will assume the role of interim dean of the School.
"MIT has long benefited from Dean Suresh's scholarship, teaching, leadership and dynamism. The Institute has a proud history of national service, and in that tradition Dean Suresh will bring his great gifts to the extraordinarily important work of the National Science Foundation," MIT President Susan Hockfield said in a statement.
Announcing Suresh's nomination in June, Obama had said in a statement he was "looking forward" to working with such an "experienced and committed" individual.
Suresh, 53, studied at Indian Institute of Technology in Madras before earning his PhD at MIT in 1981. 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.
He served as the head of the MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering from 2000 to 2006.
Suresh's work as a researcher, educator and academic administrator across a wide range of disciplines including mechanical engineering, materials science and biomedical engineering has been recognised by academic and professional organisations around the world.
He has published 230 research articles, 20 patents and three books. Suresh was the MIT's lead coordinator on the creation of the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) Centre and founded the Global Enterprise for MicroMechanics and Molecular Medicine (GEM4) in 2005.
He has been elected to such institutions as the US National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Indian National Academy of Engineering, the Academy of Sciences of the Developing World based in Italy and the German National Academy of Sciences.