Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), an Institution of Eminence and deemed-to-be university, has appointed Raviraja NS, Director - Planning and Monitoring, as the Chief Operating Officer of MAHE with effect from July 1.
Raviraja will focus on enhancing operational efficiencies of the non-academic functional departments of MAHE like general services, purchase, projects, IT and digital transformation, human resources, legal, corporate relations, public relations, media and social media, hostels and campus safety, which will report to him.
Raviraja earned his MSc in Biosciences in 1993 and PhD in Biosciences (Microbiology) in 1997 from Mangalore University. He has also completed an MBA in Operations Management. He has received postdoctoral training at Mount Allison University, Canada, and Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, where he also served as faculty until 2008. Following this, he joined Montefiore Medical Centre / Albert Einstein Cancer Centre in New York City and worked there until 2010 as a faculty.
In 2020, he joined MAHE as Founding Director of Corporate Relations and was soon appointed Professor and Coordinator at the Manipal Centre for Biotherapeutics Research (MCBR). Under his leadership, MCBR has emerged as a leading research centre in MAHE and India. In March 2023, he was appointed as the Director - Planning and Monitoring of MAHE, Manipal.
Congratulating him, Lt Gen MD Venkatesh, Vice Chancellor of MAHE, Manipal, said: “Dr Raviraja is the right choice for the position of Chief Operating Officer, due to his vast academic, research, administrative and industrial experience. In his role as Director of Planning and Monitoring at MAHE, he has worked closely with leadership in developing and monitoring vital strategies of the university. He had even served in the leadership roles of Manipal group company ‘Stempeutics Research’ for a decade while being associated with MAHE as an adjunct faculty and PhD guide at Manipal School of Life Sciences. I trust he is well acquainted with the ethos and principles of the university.”