Suresh Garimella
President of the University of Arizona
University Distinguished Professor
Suresh Garimella serves as the 23rd president of the University of Arizona and University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, positions he assumed on October 1, 2024. He has championed the university’s role as Arizona’s premier land-grant research institution, with student success as its North Star.
In his first year at Arizona, Garimella led a collaborative process to generate Delivering on Our Promise, a shared vision for the institution’s future anchored in three strategic imperatives: Success for Every Student, Research that Shapes the Future, and Engagement with Our Communities to Create Opportunity. The vision is realized through academic success goals and strategic research initiatives that guide the institutions priorities.
The university has held tuition and fees flat for resident undergraduates for a fourth consecutive year, and is extending that freeze to nonresident undergraduates and all graduate students for 2027. Garimella has made the U of A’s land-grant mission foundational to his leadership. This includes the launch of first-of-their-kind rural and tribal community-based medical school branches offering three-year MD pathways, both with full tuition scholarships for the entire class, including one in Yuma and the nation’s first in a tribal community in the Gila River Indian Community.
The strong and experienced leadership team assembled by Garimella is unified by a shared purpose and a commitment to responsible stewardship, as articulated in the university’s leadership framework. The team is driving a focus on excellence in the university’s academic, research and engagement missions, as well as strategic actions to improve the student experience and graduation outcomes.
Throughout his career, he has been committed to access and affordability. As president of the University of Vermont (UVM) from 2019 to 2024, the university froze tuition for all students throughout his tenure. Under his leadership, UVM doubled its research funding, earning R1 designation for very high research activity, and advanced its land-grant mission, including creating the Leahy Institute for Rural Partnerships. As UVM’s president, he led an annual undergraduate seminar built on the belief that practicing civil discourse is essential preparation for democratic life.
Prior to his time leading the University of Vermont, President Garimella served as the Goodson Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Executive Vice President for Research and Partnerships at Purdue University. Under his leadership of Purdue’s $660 million research enterprise, the university achieved five consecutive record years in sponsored funding, seeded approximately 50 startups annually, and developed strategic and comprehensive partnerships with major corporations, NGOs, and national governments in Colombia, India, and the Middle East.
A professor of mechanical engineering, Garimella is both a highly cited scholar and researcher and a passionate educator, having mentored over 90 graduate students and 50 post-doctoral scholars, 31 of whom were placed in prestigious faculty positions across the world. He has made seminal contributions to the field of electronics thermal, materials and energy management spanning nano and microscales to data centers and power plants, and in sustainable energy systems technology and policy. He is co-author of more than 625 refereed publications and 16 issued patents, and he has been recognized as an elected Member of the National Academy of Engineering and elected Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
Garimella has also made important contributions to national and international policy. In February 2026, he was appointed to the newly established Office of Science Advisory Committee for the U.S. Department of Energy and serves as chair of its Genesis AI Mission Subcommittee; he chairs the research advisory board of Sandia National Laboratories; and he is a long-standing member of the board of directors at Modine and the executive committee for the Council on Competitiveness. He served as a member of the National Science Board—overseeing the National Science Foundation and acting as an independent body of advisers to both the President and Congress on policy matters related to science and engineering—and previously served as a Jefferson Science Fellow at the U.S. Department of State and as Senior Fellow for Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas.
His educational background includes a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, an M.S. from The Ohio State University, and a bachelor’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.
