Newsmaker Interview: Subra Suresh

A World of Changes Prepares Subra Suresh to Tackle Change at NSF

To understand how far Subra Suresh has come since growing up in the south of India, consider this:

In 1977, the 21-year-old Suresh took his first trip on an airplane. The flight took him from Madras (now Chennai), India, to Ames, Iowa, where he began a graduate program in engineering at Iowa State University. Thirty-three years later, in his first week as director of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), Suresh twice flew halfway around the world—to a meeting of national funding agencies in Belgium and to Hawaii for an event that gave him the chance to meet with a powerful U.S. senator—and within 36 hours he was back in his 12th-floor office at NSF headquarters in Arlington, Virginia.

As the first Asian-American to lead NSF, Suresh's own story is part of the rise to prominence of scientists from that region. The older of two children in a lower-middle-class family, Suresh began first grade at the age of 4 after his mother, who still lives in Chennai, decided that having two kids at home “was too much to handle.” He scored high enough on the grueling national entrance exams to be admitted to one of the top-rated Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) campuses, making him the first in his family to attend university. After graduating from IIT Madras with a degree in mechanical engineering, he chose Iowa State in large part because it agreed to waive his application fee. Throughout his graduate education, which culminated in a doctoral degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Suresh wrote weekly letters to his mother because the cost of a phone call—$4 per minute ($14 in today's dollars)—was prohibitive.

Three decades later he had become dean of MIT's School of Engineering, a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, and co-founder of a company created to commercialize one of his discoveries. But you might not know it by listening to Suresh, a trim, soft-spoken 54-year-old man of medium height. “Subra isn't bombastic and doesn't brag about how great he is, but he's pretty sharp,” says Karl Gschneidner, a retired professor of engineering at Iowa State who still runs an active research program. “He was one of the best students I ever had,” he adds, pulling out his grade book for the class that Suresh took in 1977 and in which, not surprisingly, he earned an A. Asked what it takes to ace his course, Gschneidner says: “Knowing a hell of a lot, and answering problems the right way.”

Suresh will need to draw upon those traits—and much more—to succeed as NSF director. On the plus side, he joins an agency held in high regard by the White House and Congress: On 18 October, his first day on the job, he attended the first-ever White House science fair and received a shout-out from President Barack Obama. Obama has promised a 10-year doubling of NSF's 2008 budget of $6 billion, in line with a 2007 law—the America COMPETES ACT—that would expand federal support for basic research and science education at NSF and three other agencies. The bill enjoyed broad, bipartisan support and grew out of a 2005 National Academies' report, Rising Above the Gathering Storm, that had been embraced by the Bush Administration. One of the first actions by congressional Democrats after taking power in January 2007 was to match the president's request for an 8% increase to NSF's research programs in a supplemental funding bill that froze the budgets of most federal agencies.

But the political and fiscal climate has changed dramatically since those heady days. This spring, a reauthorization of the 2007 COMPETES Act became mired in a partisan debate over its overall cost and the new federal programs it would create, and a shrunken version passed the House of Representatives with only 17 of a potential 177 Republican votes. The president has requested a 7% increase in NSF's 2011 budget, but few expect it to survive the final version of an annual spending bill that may be approved next month by the lame-duck Congress. A resurgent Republican party, which will control the House when the next Congress convenes in January, ran on a pledge to roll back federal spending to 2008 levels as part of an effort to reduce this year's $1.3 trillion budget deficit.

Even NSF's $3 billion windfall, part of the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed in February 2009, could have a downside. No House Republican voted for the stimulus package, and observers worry that academic researchers will face the same “Where are the jobs?” question leveled at the entire stimulus package, which critics view as a waste of taxpayer dollars. Then there's the unavoidable budget cliff facing scientists who received 2-year stimulus money and who next year will be seeking continued support for their projects from NSF's regular budget.

How will a new director, NSF's 13th since it was founded in 1950, fare in such a politically charged climate? “He brings his knowledge and passion for research, along with a very creative and broad view of science and technology as an administrator,” says Thomas Magnanti, who hired Suresh as chair of MIT's department of materials science and engineering. In 2007, Suresh succeeded Magnanti as dean of engineering. “He's got to take those skills and apply them to working with the entire scientific community, as well as Congress and the Administration,” says Magnanti, who last year was named founding president of the Singapore University of Technology and Design.

Last week, in his first public interview since taking office, Suresh indicated that he's already begun to do exactly that. Even before his Senate confirmation in September to the 6-year post, Suresh began asking colleagues about the myriad issues that he will face at NSF. In the few weeks since becoming director, he told Science, he's begun to “calibrate” those opinions with the 1500 scientists and engineers who manage NSF's programs and now work for him. The goal, he says, is to find “low-hanging fruit, … ideas that we can start to implement within a few months, with the existing budget.”

He's careful not to overpromise. But he clearly feels that some changes are warranted. “Individually, each may look small and insignificant,” Suresh explains. “But together, they could have a huge impact on the morale and efficiency of the organization.”

One example of a possible early change is a tweak to NSF's peer-review system. A modest step, he says, would be a pilot project using modern communications tools to overcome obstacles in scheduling panel meetings or on-site visits for pending proposals. “I'd like to find a way to tap the best experts in the world,” he says, “rather than just settling for whoever is available that week.”

A more significant step that Suresh signaled he might be weighing is a reassessment of NSF's requirement that investigators describe the “broader impacts” of their grant proposal. That second criterion (scientific merit is the first) has been a thorn in the side of many researchers, who complain that it's unrealistic for NSF to expect them to devote time to, say, improving science education, raising public literacy, or increasing the number of minorities or women in science and engineering while they carry out their research. Suresh hinted that he'd like to give grantees some wriggle room.

“I think the spirit of the broader impacts criterion is good,” he explained. “But the question is, on whom do you place the burden? A large program has multiple entities that can ensure or follow through on the broader impact. But an individual investigator, especially a young investigator, may not have the opportunity or resources to demonstrate broader impacts. So the question is whether you can put the requirement not just on the individual but on a program that includes a collection of individuals. Perhaps you could also have some accountability by the institution itself.”

Another issue on Suresh's mind is what he called “the leaky pipeline” that drains the U.S. scientific enterprise of talent at every level, from undergraduates through senior academics. “I hope to be able to say something more about that before long,” he told Science. These and other ideas were on the agenda of a 2-day retreat Suresh held last week with senior NSF managers.

Although Suresh says that he still has a lot to learn about how NSF operates, he's already plenty savvy about ducking questions on sensitive topics with political ramifications. For example, he declined to say whether he favors changes in programs aimed at a broader geographic distribution of limited NSF dollars, a popular cause within Congress that some scientists believe waters down the quality of NSF's portfolio. He said, “I'm not sufficiently up to speed” on NSF's proposal in this year's budget to combine several programs serving underrepresented minority college students, which the House and an important Senate panel have told NSF to drop. Finding the proper balance in NSF's portfolio between grants to individual investigators and large centers and between funding research and infrastructure, another perennial topic among academic leaders, is a problem “with multiple dimensions,” he noted. All the elements are worth “nurturing,” he added.

Suresh says he's looking forward to discussing these and other issues with the National Science Board, the 24-member presidentially appointed body that sets NSF's general policies. The board, which has 10 seats unfilled because the White House has yet to nominate replacements for members who have completed their 6-year terms, can also help him rally support for any proposed major changes. And it's a good bet there will be some.

“MIT was a visible position,” says Suresh. “But this job gives you a chance to have an impact not just at one institution but across institutions, and potentially around the world. I'm looking forward to the challenge.”