Singapore, Jun 6 (PTI) Singapore's Indian-origin professor Subra Suresh will be stepping down as the president of the prestigious Nanyang Technological University at the end of this year to return to his family in the US, it was announced on Monday.

A search committee will be launched to identify his successor, the NTU said in a statement.

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“The lingering effects of a global pandemic have precluded my immediate and close-knit family, like so many others separated across continents, from coming together over a protracted time, even for significant family life events,” Suresh, 66, wrote in an email message to the campus community.

He said that the "much-anticipated" birth of his first grandchild later this year and a “strong desire to be in closer geographical proximity as a family” have convinced him and his wife to return to the US "sooner than we had originally envisioned", the TODAY newspaper quoted him as saying.

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Suresh is the fourth president of the NTU since its founding in 1991. He joined the university in January 2018, after serving as the president of Carnegie Mellon University in the US from 2013 to 2017.

In a university-wide message, Goh Swee Chen, chair of the NTU board of trustees, thanked Prof Suresh for his contributions and achievements.

“Under his leadership, Subra and his team introduced curriculum innovations and digital technologies, offering a top-quality education to our students. The NTU has made progress over the last three decades and Subra's vision for higher learning will continue this momentum,” she said.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)