Subra Suresh is an Indian-born American engineer, materials scientist, and academic leader. He is currently Professor at Large at Brown University and Vannevar Bush Professor of Engineering Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was Dean of the School of Engineering at MIT from 2007 to 2010 before being appointed as Director of the National Science Foundation by Barack Obama, where he served from 2010 to 2013. He was the president of Carnegie Mellon University from 2013 to 2017. Between 2018 and 2022, he was the fourth President of Singapore's Nanyang Technological University, where he was also the inaugural Distinguished University Professor.
Société Générale, one of Europe’s leading financial services groups, announced in February 2024 that Subra Suresh has been appointed Chairman of the Group’s Scientific Advisory Council.
Suresh was elected to the US National Academy of Engineering in 2002, to the National Academy of Sciences in 2012 and to the Institute of Medicine in 2013. He is one of a very small number of Americans to be elected to three branches of the U.S. National Academies, and the first and only university president to hold this distinction.