Emory University President Gregory L. Fenves, PhD, recently announced the appointment of biomedical scientist Ravi Bellamkonda, PhD, as the university’s next Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, effective July 1, 2021.
Dr. Bellamkonda returns to Emory after serving as Dean of the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University for 5 years. He previously held a joint appointment as a faculty member at Emory and Georgia Institute of Technology beginning in 2003, serving as Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering from 2013 to 2016.
Ravi Bellamkonda, PhD
Cross-Disciplinary Leadership
At Duke, Dr. Bellamkonda oversaw improvements in the academic and research enterprise. He led a reimagining of the engineering curriculum to introduce experiential learning, design thinking, and team-based projects in the first year and to emphasize authentic, society-oriented problem-solving throughout the undergraduate experience.
Dr. Bellamkonda also helped recruit and retain many preeminent faculty members, realizing a greater than 10% increase in the school’s tenure-track faculty and 30% growth in faculty research expenditures. At the same time, the number of female and other underrepresented faculty members in the school of engineering nearly doubled.
“I believe that Emory has a very special opportunity to define itself at a historic moment—as a socially just university that embraces innovation and leads pathbreaking research across disciplines,” said Dr. Bellamkonda. “We have the potential to lead in so many areas, from the creative arts and medicine to undergraduate and graduate education and beyond. We are also poised to make great strides in advocating for racial and social justice, building on the legacy of activism and engagement that has defined our home city of Atlanta for generations.”
Professional Experience
Dr. Bellamkonda received his PhD in medical science from Brown University, writing his dissertation on nerve regeneration, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship as a Markey Fellow in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. Before serving as Dean of Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering, he spent decades as a prolific scholar, first at Case Western Reserve University and then at Emory, with a joint appointment at Georgia Tech and Emory School of Medicine.
Dr. Bellamkonda’s lab has contributed to advances in peripheral nerve repair, brain-machine interfaces, and spinal cord injury repair. In recent years, his lab has focused on developing creative and innovative approaches for the treatment of adult and pediatric brain tumors.
