Washington: A top Indian American doctor who heads the prestigious Carnegie Mellon University, will be inducted into the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in recognition of his research into cell mechanics related to malaria, blood diseases and certain types of cancer. Dr Subra Suresh, would be one of the only 16 living Americans to be elected to all three national academies — IOM, National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineering. Suresh is the first Carnegie Mellon (CMU) faculty member to hold membership in all three academies. Before becoming president of CMU last year, he served as director of the National Science Foundation (NSF), a $7-billion independent government science agency charged with advancing all fields of fundamental science, engineering research and education. He has also been elected a fellow or honorary member of all the major materials research societies in the United States and India.

Suresh received his Bachelor of Technology degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, a master's degree from Iowa State University and Doctor of Science degree from MIT. Following postdoctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, he joined the faculty of engineering at Brown University in December 1983. He joined MIT in 1993 as the R P Simmons Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and served as head of MIT's Department of Materials Science and Engineering during 2000-2006. In 2011, Suresh was awarded the Padma Shri.