Sonny Ramaswamy is a researcher and agricultural scientist with extensive experience in institutional and interagency partnerships to address food and nutrition security in the context of existential threats and focused on food, farming systems, including vertical and controlled environment agriculture, nanotechnology, robotics, drones, Big Data, AI, cyber-physical systems, public health and nutrition, energy, earth systems, water, climate science, social sciences, and military and Veterans issues. Ramaswamy served as president of Northwest Commission on Colleges and University, recognized by US Department of Education to accredit colleges and universities in the United States.
In 2012, Ramaswamy was appointed by President Barack Obama as Director of USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, which catalyzes transformative discoveries, education, and engagement to solve societal challenges. Ramaswamy led and provided strategic direction for broad, national policies to develop, execute, and deploy cutting-edge science with over $1.5 billion in Federal funding to address challenges in food and agricultural systems. He has also partnered with USAID and several international agricultural research centres and helped create a robust program of funding for American universities to engage in international research and extension projects.
Previously, Ramaswamy served as dean of Oregon State’s College of Agricultural Sciences, director of Purdue’s Agricultural Research Programs, university distinguished professor and head of entomology at Kansas State, and professor of entomology at Mississippi State. Ramaswamy’s BSc (Agriculture) and MSc (Entomology) are from the University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore, India; his PhD (Entomology) is from Rutgers. He completed postdoc research at Michigan State University.
He is a national of the United States of America.
