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Nashville, TN
Indian American energy expert and academician Padma Raghavan has been named to the Tennessee Nuclear Energy Advisory Council. The council was recently created by an Executive Order to position Tennessee as a national leader for nuclear energy innovation and advancement.
On the formation of the State’s first Nuclear Energy Advisory Council and the new appointments, Tennessee Governor William Byron Lee said, “I am confident that these appointees will use their unique industry expertise to ensure that Tennessee is the top state for nuclear energy companies to invest and succeed, creating quality jobs and greater opportunity for Tennesseans.”
Raghavan is the vice provost for Research and Innovation and a distinguished professor of Computer Science at Vanderbilt University. As vice provost, Raghavan oversees the advancement of the university’s research and innovation portfolio for the development of long-term strategic partnerships spanning higher education, government, and the private sector.
Before joining Vanderbilt in 2016, she served at Penn State in a diverse academic leadership role including as the founding director of the Institute for Computational and Data Sciences. In 2022, President Joe Biden appointed Raghavan to a two-year term on the President’s Committee on the National Medal of Science, which evaluates nominees for the National Medal of Science award. IIT Kharagpur, India alumnus Raghavan is a recipient of many accolades, including the National Science Foundation’s CAREER award, and is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
