Venky To Head KSG Program

Venkatesh “Venky” Narayanamurti has been appointed the new director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government.

“We were extraordinarily pleased to have a person who has one leg firmly rooted in the sciences and another leg that’s interested in and has experience in policy,” said Graham T. Allison, the director of the Belfer Center.

Allison said that the timing worked out particularly well, since Venky—who is currently the John A. and Elizabeth S. Armstrong Professor of engineering and applied sciences and a professor of physics—stepped down last year as Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. There, he spearheaded the effort to transform the institution from a division into a school, and he was interested in the Belfer Center position.

Venky will be succeeding John P. Holdren, who is currently on leave to serve in the Obama Administration as the director of the White House Office on Science and Technology and as the assistant to the president for science and technology.

In a repetition of history, the founding director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program, Harvey Brooks, had also previously served as Dean of the then Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

“The whole thing has a lot of echoes,” said Allison, who is also a Kennedy School professor. “Harvey is universally regarded as a giant in this domain, so each of Harvey’s successors stand on his shoulders.”

Venky is currently on sabbatical at Harvard Business School and the Kennedy School, where he is working to develop efficient management techniques for engineering and research institutions.

He is also helping to create the new undergraduate concentration “Technology, Self, and Society,” which will focus on the interplay between technology and society.

In an interview last year, Venky said that his work at the Business and Kennedy schools would “require a different kind of culture and mindset—I want to use my experience to aid undergraduates and the University.”

His interdisciplinary outlook will be an asset at the Belfer Center, Allison said, which seeks to train future leaders on policy issues related to the intersection of science, technology, the environment, and international affairs and security, according to the Center’s Web site.

“I think he is an excellent choice,” said Lewis M. Branscomb, who is another director emeritus of the Science, Technology, and Public Program. “I believe he understands the relationship between scientific development and economic growth and right at the moment, that is the issue.”

Venky received his doctoral degree in physics from Cornell University and worked at both Sandia National Laboratories and Bell Labs, where he managed groups that explored the interface of business and engineering. He then served as Dean of the School of Engineering at the University of California Santa Barbara before coming to Harvard in 1998.

—Staff writer Alissa M. D’Gama can be reached at adgama@fas.harvard.edu.