International search leads to new director of Bindley Bioscience Center

S. Ramaswamy, senior professor and dean of the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine in Bangalore, India, has been named director of the Bindley Bioscience Center in Purdue's Discovery Park.

The appointment is the result of an international search conducted by the University. Ramaswamy will join Purdue as a visiting scholar in January and will officially assume duties as Bindley director in May.

“Dr. Ramaswamy’s past experience in interdisciplinary research makes him an ideal fit for the Bindley Bioscience Center,” says Tomás Díaz de la Rubia, chief scientist and executive director of Discovery Park. “I am confident that he will implement a strategic plan that will harness Purdue’s strengths to position Bindley as a global leader in converging life, engineering and physical and data sciences.”

A structural biologist with particular expertise in protein crystallography, Ramaswamy earned his Ph.D. in molecular biophysics from the Indian Institute of Science at Bangalore. After graduation, he moved to Uppsala, Sweden, for a fellowship at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. Ramaswamy stayed at SLU for eight years, serving as a researcher and docent before moving to Iowa City for a faculty position at the University of Iowa. While working as assistant dean and director of core research facilities in Iowa, Ramaswamy helped create the university’s structural biology program -- an accomplishment he later duplicated at inSTEM in India.

Ramaswamy currently holds the founding dean’s position at inStem. He co-founded and served as the first CEO of the Center for Cellular and Molecular Platforms, a life sciences innovation hub for academia, industry and startup companies. He also serves as scientific advisor to several startups that he helped to create.

In addition to his position in Bindley, Ramaswamy will also hold a joint professorship with his primary appointment in the Department of Biological Sciences and secondary appointment in the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering.

“Since its opening in 2005, the Bindley Bioscience Center has facilitated large-scale, multi-investigator proposals through state-of-the-art facilities and strategic partnerships on and off campus,” says Suresh Garimella, executive vice president for research and partnerships and the Goodson Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering. “Dr. Ramaswamy will provide excellent leadership for this important cross-disciplinary center, which offers our faculty unique resources and capabilities to advance their research programs.”

About Discovery Park

Discovery Park is a place where Purdue researchers move beyond traditional boundaries, collaborating across disciplines and with policymakers and business leaders to create solutions for a better world. Grand challenges of global health, global conflict and security, and those that lie at the nexus of sustainable energy, world food supply, water and the environment, are the focus of researchers in Discovery Park. The translation of discovery to impact is integrated into the fabric of Discovery Park through entrepreneurship programs and partnerships.

Writer: Elizabeth Harwood 765-494-7324, eharwood@purdue.edu 
Source: Tomás Díaz de la Rubia, tddlr@purdue.edu