Melur K. “Ram” Ramasubramanian is serving as the VicePresident for Research (VPR) and is responsible for the strategy and itsexecution for significantly growing the research enterprise at UVA through a strongpartnership with the Provost and UVA’s eleven schools and multiple researchcenters. He leads university-wide strategic growth activities including thePan-University institutes, explore-to-build initiatives, and the 3Cavaliersrapid seed funding initiative.  He managesvarious University units that comprise the research infrastructure, includingthe office of sponsored programs (OSP), the research development office thatfacilitates the acquisition of research funding, the licensing and venturesgroup for research commercialization and the incubation of new companies, aswell as the offices for managing regulatory aspects of compliance and researchsafety.

Ram joined to UVA from the National Science Foundation (NSF) where hewas a Program Director for the Engineering Research Centers (ERC) program inthe Directorate for Engineering. His prior appointments include D. W. ReynoldsDistinguished Professor and Department Chair of Mechanical Engineering atClemson University; Assistant, Associate, and Professor of Mechanical andAerospace Engineering at North Carolina State University; Lead Program Directorfor the IGERT program at the National Science Foundation; and ResearchAssociate at the Georgia Pacific Innovation Institute, Georgia-PacificCorporation.

His research interests are rooted in interdisciplinaryapplications and include mechanics of manufacturing processes and short fibercomposites, bio-manufacturing and tissue engineering that includemicrofluidics, biomimetic materials and systems, mechatronics, and biomedicaldevices.  He has been widely published in engineering and biomedicaljournals.  He currently holds a tenured appointment as Professor of Mechanicaland Aerospace Engineering at UVA.