Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), Manipal, appointed Raviraja N. Seetharam, Director (Planning and Monitoring), MAHE, as the Chief Operating Officer (COO) from Monday, July 1.
He will focus on enhancing operational efficiencies of the non-academic functional departments of MAHE like general services, purchase, projects, IT & digital transformation, human resources, legal, corporate relations, public relations, media and social media, hostels and campus safety, which will report to him.
Mr. Raviraja did his M.Sc. in Biosciences in 1993 and Ph.D. in Biosciences (Microbiology) in 1997 from Mangalore University. He has also completed an MBA in Operations Management. Further, he has received postdoctoral training at Mount Allison University, Canada, and Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, U.S.A., 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). In March 2023, he was appointed as the Director — Planning & Monitoring, MAHE, Manipal.
He has more than 27 years of post-PhD research experience in diverse areas of biology, a release from MAHE said.