Suresh Garimella

Suresh Garimella
27th President of the University of Vermont
Incumbent
Assumed office July 1, 2019
Preceded by	Tom Sullivan
Personal details
Born	1964 or 1965 Nedunuru, India
Education	Indian Institute of Technology Madras (BS) Ohio State University (MS) University of California, Berkeley (PhD)

Suresh Garimella (/sˈɛhɛʃ/) is an Indian-American mechanical engineer and university administrator. He is the current and 27th president of the University of Vermont and professor of mechanical engineering. Before assuming the presidency in 2019, Garimella was executive vice president for research and partnerships at Purdue University and Goodson Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering.

He is a highly cited scholar, achieving an h-index of 100 in 2023. He is a fellow in the National Academy of Inventors, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).

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Early life and education

Garimella was born in Nedunuru, Andhra Pradesh, India.

In 1985, he earned his B.S. in mechanical engineering from IIT Madras, which he has described as "much more intense than MIT." He then received an M.S. from Ohio State University in 1986, followed by a PhD from University of California, Berkeley in 1989, both in mechanical engineering.

Career

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Garimella’s first faculty position was at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, from 1990 to 1999. He held the Cray Research chair professorship as an assistant and associate professor at UW-M before moving to Purdue in 1999.

Purdue University

At Purdue University, Garimella was executive vice president for research and partnerships and the Goodson Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering. He also served as Purdue’s chief global affairs officer. He was the founding director of the Cooling Technologies Research Center, which grew to include more than 45 industry members supporting research with applications for electronics and automotives manufacturing.

In 2018, Garimella was appointed as a member of the National Science Board by the Trump Administration. He was named a Jefferson Science Fellow by the United States Department of State in 2010 by the Obama administration, and served as a State Department science and policy advisor to the International Energy Agency and a Senior Fellow for the Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas.

At Purdue, he was part of the creation of the Discovery Park District, a public-private partnership developing a portion of Purdue’s campus into a hub for research and development, education, and housing. He was also responsible for launching Purdue’s Pillars of Excellence in the Life Sciences Initiative, a $60 million effort to bring together faculty research across life science disciplines at Purdue, primarily at Discovery Park.

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University of Vermont

Since July 1, 2019, Garimella has been the president of the University of Vermont. In his first year, Garimella presented a strategic vision for UVM, “Amplifying Our Impact,” identifying three core areas of focus: student success, including access and affordability, investing in UVM’s distinctive research strengths in promoting healthy societies and a healthy environment, and fulfilling the university’s land-grant mission of service to the state of Vermont.

During his tenure, the university made the decision to freeze tuition for all students for five consecutive years, and in 2023 the university announced a sixth year of frozen tuition for in-state students. He also created the UVM Promise program in 2023, which ensures that students from all households in Vermont with incomes under $75,000 attend UVM tuition-free for 2024-25. In his presidency, UVM has enrolled the largest first-year class in its history and received record applications, reaching more than 30,000 in 2022.

This student interest has coincided with a doubling of external research funding for the university since 2018, exceeding $260 million in 2023, an all-time high, and a move into the top-100 of public research institutions, ranking 83 in the National Science Foundation HERD measure for 2023.

UVM has emphasized its land-grant mission of support to the state of Vermont under his leadership, introducing the Office of Engagement and founding the Leahy Institute for Rural Partnerships, which connects university researchers and students to programs designed to make positive change in Vermont’s rural communities. The state of Vermont increased its appropriation support of the university for the first time in 14 years during Garimella’s third year at UVM, by 25%, and has included annual increases in state budgets each year following.

In 2020, Garimella appointed renowned physicist Julia Phillips as President’s Distinguished Scholar at UVM. In 2023, Garimella appointed retired US Senator Patrick Leahy as a President’s Distinguished Fellow at UVM, one of several honors Garimella and his administration developed to recognize Leahy’s career of service to Vermont and contributions to the university.

Commencement speakers during his tenure have included adventurer Erik Weihenmayer and National Science Foundation director Sethuraman Panchanathan.

He and his administration have faced criticism among students and faculty at times during his tenure. A 2020 plan in the College of Arts and Sciences to terminate select humanities programs led to the creation of an ad-hoc group called UVM United Against the Cuts, which collected over 3,000 signatures for a petition stating a lack of confidence. As that plan evolved, the university established a School of the Arts in 2022 and a School of World Languages and Cultures in 2023 within the College of Arts and Sciences. His administration received pushback for its response to a Department of Education investigation into antisemitism on campus, and over the cancellation of a planned guest lecture by Palestinian author Mohammed El-Kurd.

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