When Ravi Bellamkonda PhD’94 was at Brown, his routine while studying medical science included picking up a cranberry muffin each day. Now, Bellamkonda’s days include fewer cranberry muffins and more administrative duties as he serves as The Ohio State University’s 18th president.
When he was appointed to the position in March, OSU was going through a tumultuous time. Bellamkonda’s predecessor — Ted Carter — resigned, and students were calling to remove the name of donor Les Wexner, a former financial manager for Jeffrey Epstein, from university buildings. Since Bellamkonda assumed his role, OSU has also announced a $100 million settlement for a sexual abuse lawsuit brought by hundreds of former students against a university-employed doctor.
For Bellamkonda, stepping into the new role has been “exhilarating, demanding and fulfilling.”
In approaching OSU’s challenges, Bellamkonda outlined his strategy to “center on the mission, do the right thing, be transparent, give all you can to make the world better and let it play out with time.”
Bellamkonda has been at OSU for a year and a half now, and he said he is still working to “learn the DNA of the place” as he navigates the new position. He envisions the university’s mission as owning “its Midwestern ethos of grit, resilience (and) winning.”
Bellamkonda is no stranger to higher education, having previously served as provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at Emory University, dean at Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering and associate vice president for research at Georgia Tech.
Bellamkonda called Brown his “first stop” upon arriving in the United States in 1989.
“I say as an immigrant that the U.S. is not an entirely meritocratic system. It’s a mix of merit and network, and as an immigrant, I had no network,” he said. “Brown gave me the network that enabled, through some merit perhaps, … the career I’ve had.”
He credits his time at Brown for nurturing his love of “intellectual exploration” and an open-minded approach to new cultures and ideas.
Diane Hoffman-Kim PhD’93, an associate professor of neuroscience and engineering and a former classmate of Bellamkonda’s, described him as having a “wonderful combination of grounded character, curiosity and the ability to think outside the box.”
Dean and Professor of Engineering Tejal Desai ’94 P’27, who overlapped with Bellamkonda during her undergraduate years, echoed the same sentiments. “He listens deeply, empowers the people around him and leads with a collaborative spirit,” Desai wrote in an email to The Herald.
“Ravi embodies the best of what a Brown education and environment can foster, such as a cross-disciplinary mindset and a commitment to societal impact,” she wrote.
Bellamkonda has spent most of his career as a researcher and even ran his own laboratory until two years ago. He said his achievements as a researcher studying brain tumors were facilitated by an administrative system that supported his work.
Now serving in a prominent administrative role, Bellamkonda defines a successful university as one that creates transformative experiences for both students and faculty, allowing them to shift their perspective about the world or cause the world to shift its perspective.
“My ethos is that the administration’s job is to increase the probability that those things happen,” he said. “It is not the student’s job or the faculty’s job to help the university.”
Bellamkonda also hopes to ensure that students at a large public institution can have access to “the same quality and excellence” he remembered having at Brown, regardless of the scale of the student population.
Looking ahead to the coming year, he expressed his excitement about an upcoming OSU partnership with Google and a new program that will fund 100 OSU student startups annually by 2030.
When describing the legacy he wants to leave at OSU, Bellamkonda hopes to “inject a certain sense of optimism and energy to help us as an institution reach for what’s possible.”
“I call it giving ourselves the gift of high expectations because our mission demands it,” he said.
Samah Hamid is a university news editor covering faculty and career & alumni. She is from Sharon, Massachusetts and plans to concentrate in Biology. In her free time, you can find her taking a nap, reading, or baking a sweet treat.
