Ohio State Names Provost Ravi Bellamkonda as Its 18th President — Just Four Days After Ted Carter's Resignation

Ohio State University moved quickly to fill the leadership void left by Ted Carter's abrupt resignation, with the Board of Trustees set to formally appoint Executive Vice President and Provost Ravi V. Bellamkonda as the university's 18th president during a public meeting Thursday morning. The announcement, first reported by The Columbus Dispatch, comes just four days after Carter stepped down amid an ethics scandal involving inappropriate access to university resources.

Bellamkonda, a bioengineer and neuroscientist who has served as Ohio State's chief academic officer since January 2025, will assume the presidency immediately — becoming, in the process, Ohio State's sixth president within the past 14 years.

Who Is Ravi Bellamkonda?

A bioengineer and neuroscientist, Bellamkonda came to Ohio State from Emory University in Atlanta, where he served as provost and vice president for academic affairs. His career in higher education has taken him across some of the nation's most prestigious research institutions over three decades.

According to his official Ohio State biography and Wikipedia profile, Bellamkonda's academic career began with a postdoctoral fellowship at MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences between 1994 and 1995. He then joined Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland as an assistant professor before moving to Georgia Tech, where he eventually became the Carol Ann and David D. Flanagan Chair in Biomedical Engineering. In 2013, he was named chair of the joint Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. In 2016, he became Vinik Dean of Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering — one of the most prestigious engineering deanships in the country. From 2021 to 2025, he served as provost at Emory University before joining Ohio State.

In 2021, Bellamkonda received a National Institutes of Health Director's Transformative Research Award for his work designing a "tractor beam" to treat pediatric brain tumors, supported by the National Cancer Institute. The tumor monorail device developed in his lab has been recognized as a breakthrough technology by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. He is the scientific founder of a startup, Exvade Bioscience, that is pioneering first-in-human trials for the tumor monorail device.

His tumor monorail cancer research was the subject of a BBC science report and a feature profile in the Britain-based international journal The Engineer. A native of India, Bellamkonda holds a Ph.D. from Brown University.

A Carter Hire Now Inheriting Carter's Crisis

There is an unmistakable irony in Bellamkonda's ascension: he was hired by Carter himself, a year into Carter's presidency. When announcing Bellamkonda's appointment as provost in October 2024, Carter said: "We couldn't be more pleased to welcome Dr. Bellamkonda and his exemplary record of research, teaching and service to the Ohio State community. In searching for a chief academic officer, it was critical that we find the exact right individual — someone who exemplifies our commitment to excellence in academics as well as collaborative leadership. I look forward to working with him to help shape our strategic vision for the future of our university."

That announcement can be read in full at Ohio State News. Now Bellamkonda inherits not only the presidency, but the task of stabilizing an institution rattled by its third leadership crisis in six years. As chief academic officer, he oversees 15 colleges, four regional campuses, and more than 8,600 faculty members who serve nearly 67,000 students. That breadth of institutional knowledge is likely a central reason the board opted to promote from within rather than launch an extended national search — a process that, given Ohio State's recent history, might have taken a year or more and left the university in sustained limbo.

The Morale and Continuity Challenge

The speed of the appointment reflects the board's recognition that Ohio State cannot afford another protracted period of uncertainty. But promoting from within also raises questions about continuity with Carter's agenda — and whether the same leadership culture that allowed the ethics scandal to develop will truly change.

As The Lantern reported, Matt Mayhew, a Flesher Professor of Educational Administration at Ohio State, said when he learned of Carter's resignation all he could think was "Oh, my goodness, not again." "I think what really hurts the community is this just happened recently with president Johnson, right?" Mayhew said. Former President Kristina M. Johnson resigned in 2023 after just two-and-a-half years on the job, similar to Carter.

Mayhew said the change in presidents raises questions about Ohio State's direction and the future of Carter's initiatives, including the university's AI fluency program, and that the nature of Carter's resignation creates a morale issue that will take time to address. "How do we center this university as great and as excellent, given what we've seen recently?" he said.

In an email sent the day Carter's resignation was announced, Bellamkonda and John Warner, CEO of the Wexner Medical Center and executive vice president, reassured students and staff of Ohio State's continued strength. "We echo the view of the Board of Trustees that we have tremendous strength, and our momentum is and will continue to be strong," the email said.

The American Association of University Professors has called for a transparent hiring process that honors shared governance — a call the board will now need to address in explaining why an internal promotion, rather than a full national search, was the right choice at this moment.

What Comes Next

The board's formal vote and a news conference were expected Thursday morning at 9 a.m. Once appointed, Bellamkonda faces an immediate set of priorities: overseeing the board's investigation into Carter's conduct, managing the fallout from the Krisanthe Vlachos scandal, and communicating a clear institutional vision to a faculty and student body that has watched its university cycle through leadership crises with discouraging regularity.

Bellamkonda's combination of academic gravitas, deep institutional familiarity, and distance from the scandal that claimed his predecessor may make him the steadying force Ohio State needs. Whether it will be enough to restore confidence at one of the country's largest public universities remains to be seen. For now, Ohio State has chosen stability — and bet that the man Ted Carter hired to run its academic operation is the right person to run the institution entire.