Indian American Dr. Subra Suresh, 56, will be stepping down as director of National Science Foundation by the end of March to serve as the 9th President of Carnegie Mellon University from July.1

Suresh, an IIT alumnus and ex-dean at MIT, will succeed Dr. Jared L Cohon, who is stepping down from the post after 16 years.

Suresh told Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that public and private universities need to constantly upgrade both curriculum and facilities for getting better positions globally. "It won't be a cake walk," he predicted.

Describing his style, Suresh said , "I'm perhaps quietly persistent. I try to hear every point of view listen to different voices and bring different experiences to the decision-making."

Suresh, a Padma Shree awardee, an honor given by the Indian Government, will be the first Indian to head an American institution with over a million dollars in endowment.

CMU, considered as world's best institution for computer science studies, has conferred degrees to some renowned figures in the world - John Nash, Vinod Khosla, Andy Bechtolsheim, Jairam Ramesh and Teresa Heinz among others.

"Subra has shown himself to be a consummate scientist and engineer. He has also done his part to make sure the American people benefit from advances in technology, and opened up more opportunities for women, minorities, and other underrepresented groups," President Obama said while accepting his resignation on Tuesday.

Other Indian Americans to hold top administrative posts in American academia are Nitin Nohria, dean of Harvard Business School; Soumitra Dutta, dean of SC Johnson Graduate School of Management at Yale; Renu Khator of University of Houston and Beheruz Sethna at the University of West Georgia.

Suresh was nominated for the post of director, NSF in 2010 by President Barack Obama and was later unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

Suresh came to the U.S., from Mumbai, India, at the age of 21.

He completed his master's degree from Iowa State University and his doctorate from MIT.

In addition, Suresh worked on his postdoctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

After the completion of the research, Suresh joined the engineering faculty at Brown University in 1983 and became full time professor in 1989.

Four year later he joined the MIT faculty.