Ravi V. Bellamkonda was selected as Ohio State’s next executive vice president and provost. Credit: Courtesy of Ohio State University

Ravi V. Bellamkonda was selected as Ohio State’s next executive vice president and provost. Credit: Courtesy of The Ohio State University

Ravi V. Bellamkonda was announced as Ohio State’s new executive vice president and provost in a university statement Monday.

After a year-long search following previous Vice President and Provost Melissa Gilliam’s departure to become president of Boston University, Bellamkonda has been named as her successor. He will take over from interim executive Vice President and Provost Karla Zadnik Jan. 14, pending approval from the Board of Trustees.

Zadnik will continue to serve as interim dean of the College of Public Health.

According to previous Lantern reporting, Gilliam had a base annual salary of $618,000. The Lantern is currently working to verify Bellamkonda’s base annual salary, which is not yet publicly available via Ohio State’s salary database.

The university’s executive vice president and provost is responsible for overseeing programs and initiatives in the Office of Academic Affairs. The executive vice president and provost serves as a member of the President’s Cabinet, and the deans of all 15 academic colleges report to the provost, according to the press release.

In a statement, university President Ted Carter Jr. said it was “critical” the university finds someone who exemplifies the university’s “commitment to excellence in academics” and “collaborative leadership.”

“Dr. Bellamkonda is that person, and I look forward to working with him to help shape our
strategic vision for the future of our university and its impact on Ohio, the nation and our world,” Carter said.

Bellamkonda is currently the provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at Emory University in Atlanta, a position he has held since July 2021. During his time at Emory, Bellamkonda led several initiatives, including faculty retention and recruitment efforts, according to the press release.

Prior to Emory, Bellamkonda served as the Vinik Dean of the Pratt School of
Engineering at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. There, he helped launch two interdisciplinary institutes, the Duke Quantum Center and the Center for Advanced Genomic Technologies.

Under Bellamkonda, annual extramural research increased from $68 million to more than $100 million each year, according to the press release.

“I believe deeply in the noble mission of higher education and the excellence of higher
education in the United States, especially its impact on research, shaping the future through the
education of our students, and our responsibility to engagement in our communities,”
Bellamkonda said in the press release.

Bellamkonda began his professional career in Ohio as an assistant and associate professor at Case Western Reserve University in 1995, where he worked for eight years before becoming a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory School of Medicine in 2003.

In Georgia, Bellamkonda then became the Wallace H. Coulter Professor and chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering, and associate vice president for research at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory School of Medicine.

Bellamkonda earned a bachelors in engineering from Osmania University in 1989. He then went on to complete a postdoctoral fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1995, and earn a PhD at Brown University in 1994.

In 2021, he was awarded a National Institutes of Health Director’s Transformative Research award for his work in designing a “tractor beam” to treat pediatric brain tumors, according to the University of Emory’s website. Bellamkonda is also the founder of a startup, Exvade Bioscience, which is currently working on the first-in-human trials for the tumor monorail device — recognized as breakthrough technology by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration — according to the press release.

“We are delighted to help bring someone of Dr. Bellamkonda’s considerable accomplishments
and collegial spirit to Ohio State,” said John J. Warner — co-chair of the university’s search committee, chief executive officer of The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center
and executive vice president at Ohio State — in the press release.

The search committee was composed of faculty, staff, and students from across the university.

“I am excited to have the opportunity to serve The Ohio State University with its scale and
reach,” Bellamkonda said in the press release. “Ohio State is one of the great land-grant universities in our nation, and we are poised under President Carter’s leadership to excel in every part of our academic mission. My leadership philosophy is to relentlessly pursue excellence, and I am honored to join all of the incredible faculty, staff and students at Ohio State who make that their mission each day.”