IIT Madras Alumni Association Organizes A Talk By Prof. Subra Suresh

IIT Madras Alumni Association Organizes A Talk By Prof. Subra Suresh

Press Release
11/01/2006

Subra Suresh, Ford Professor of Engineering and former Head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and Professor of Biological Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will give a talk on:

Protein Effects on Cell Biomechanics and their Consequences for Human Diseases

Within the past decade, advances in the fields of biophysics, nanotechnology, biochemistry and genomics have provided unprecedented opportunities to manipulate and measure the deformability and adhesion of single biological cells and molecules. These advances offer unique opportunities to probe the connections between the mechanics of living cells or subcellular protein molecular structures and human disease states. This presentation will examine such connections in the context of three major human disease groups: infectious disease (in the context of P. falciparum malaria), pancreatic cancer, and several hereditary blood cell disorders. In each case, the discussion will focus on how cell and molecular mechanics influences or is influenced by the disease state, with a view to summarize recent advances and to highlight areas for significant further research is needed.

Date: Monday, November 6, 2006
Time: 7:00 pm -9:00 pm
Place: Room E51-335, MIT

Prof. Subra Suresh received his Bachelor of Technology degree from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, in 1977, M.S. from Iowa State University in 1979, and Sc.D. from M.I.T. in 1981. After conducting post-doctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, he joined Brown University in December 1983 as Assistant Professor of Engineering and was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in July 1986 and to Professor in July 1989. He joined M.I.T. in 1993 as the R. P. Simmons Professor.

Suresh has served as Coordinating Editor of the international journal Acta Materialia and as a frequent consultant to industry and government. He was the first MIT Chair of the Advanced Materials Program of the Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA). He is the Chair of the Materials Section Peer Committee and the Materials Section of the US National Academy of Engineering. Suresh has contributed to the areas of thin films, mechanical properties, fracture and fatigue, and nanomechanics of single biomolecules and cells. He is the Director and lead-PI of the MIT Defense University Research Initiative on NanoTechnology Program on Nanostructured Materials which is funded by the Office of Naval Research. He is the author/coauthor of approximately 200 research articles in international journals, the coeditor of five books, and a co-inventor on fourteen US and international patents. He has authored the book Fatigue of Materials, published in 1991 by Cambridge University Press, and the monograph on Fundamentals of Functionally Graded Materials, published in 1998 by the Institute of Materials, UK. His latest book, with L.B. Freund, on Thin Film Materials was published by Cambridge University Press in fall 2003.

Professor Sureshâ€™s awards and honors include: the Acta Gold Medal (2006), election as a Honorary Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences (2005), Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2004) and Associate Fellow of the Third World Academy of Sciences (2004), the Sauveur Achievement Award of the American Society for Materials International (2004), honorary membership in the Indian Institute of Metals (2004), the Gordon Moore Distinguished Scholarship at California Institute of Technology (2004), the Brahm Prakash Professorship at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (2004), election as a Foreign Fellow of Indian National Academy of Engineering (2003), Senior Humboldt Research Prize from the Humboldt Foundation, Germany (2004-2006), selection by the Institute for Scientific Information as a highly cited researcher in materials science (2003), Election to the US National Academy of Engineering (2002), the Distinguished Materials Scientist/Engineer Award from TMS (2001), Clark B. Millikan Visiting Professorship at Caltech (1999), the TFR Swedish National Chair in Engineering at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm (1997-98), the Distinguished Alumnus Award (1997) from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, Honorary Membership of the Materials Research Society of India (1996), the Ross Coffin Purdy Award from the American Ceramic Society (1992) for the best paper published in the Journal of the American Ceramic Society, two Allied Signal Foundation Research Awards (1989, 1990), the Technical Analysis Corporation Teacher Award at Brown University â€œfor an inspiring faculty member in the Division of Engineeringâ€ (1989), the Ford Foundation Research Award (1986-87), the Presidential Young Investigator Award (1985-90), the Champion H. Mathewson Gold Medal (1985) from TMS, the Robert Lansing Hardy Gold Medal (1983) from TMS, the Outstanding Scientific Accomplishment Award (1982) from the US Department of Energy, Premium for Academic Excellence Award (1977-79) from Iowa State University, and the National Merit Scholarship from the Government of India (1971-77).

He has been elected a Fellow of several major professional societies including: TMS in 2000 for â€œpioneering contributions to the understanding of mechanical behavior of materials and for leadership in materials educationâ€, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (1996), the American Ceramic Society (1995) and the American Society for Materials International (1994). He has been invited to give a number of endowed lectures which include: the Kreidl Lecture of the Southwest Materials Consortium (2004), the S. S. Penner Distinguished Lecture at the University of California, San Diego (2004), the Millsaps-Taylor Memorial Lecture at University of Florida (2003), the GE Distinguished Lecture at RPI (2002), the R. B. Trull Distinguished Lecture in Engineering at University of Texas, Austin (2002), the Kelly Lecture at Cambridge University (2001), the Southwest Mechanics Lecture Series (1997), the Shell Distinguished Lecture at Northwestern University (1995), and the Midwest Mechanics Lecture Series (1994-95).

This event is organized by the IIT-Madras Alumni Association Boston Chapter a.k.a. Gajendra Cirlcle of Friends (GCoF).

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