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Arvind Raman (Fed)
Under Secretary for Standards and Technology and NIST Director
Arvind Raman is the fifth Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology and the 18th director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Dr. Raman joined NIST after a distinguished career at Purdue University in Indiana. In February 2023 he was named the John A. Edwardson Dean of Engineering at the university. Starting as an assistant professor at Purdue in 2000, he received multiple awards for teaching and was appointed the Robert V. Adams Professor of Engineering in 2012. His research has focused on atomic force microscopy, human biomechanics and electronics manufacturing. Starting early in his career, he often collaborated with NIST researchers in nanotechnology.
Dr. Raman’s work on the atomic force microscope (AFM) has helped the scientific and industrial communities recognize and exploit nonlinear effects to better and more rapidly image and measure properties of complex materials at the nanoscale.
At the close of his tenure as dean of engineering at Purdue, the university grants more engineering degrees annually than any other university; leads in market demand; and has reduced the average time to graduate with a B.S. degree in engineering to under four years for the first time in the college’s history, all while holding tuition frozen for 14 years. Purdue Engineering’s U.S. News ranking for research continuously rose under his leadership, to the top four in the country in 2026, with record-breaking research expenditures and philanthropic dollars raised under Dr. Raman’s leadership.
He joined Purdue University in 2000 as an assistant professor after earning a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of California at Berkeley, a master’s in mechanical engineering from Purdue University, and a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.
Dr. Raman’s honors and awards include the Gustus Larson Memorial Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the Keeley fellowship from the University of Oxford, and a National Science Foundation CAREER award. In 2008 he was named a Purdue University Faculty Scholar. In 2012 he was elected a fellow by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and in 2026 a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.