Preeti Sivasankar: The India-Trained Scientist Taking the Helm of Purdue’s College of Pharmacy

From studying audiology and speech rehabilitation at the University of Bombay to leading research innovation at Purdue University, Preeti Sivasankar has built a career spanning biomedical research, healthcare, interdisciplinary science and academic leadership. Her appointment as interim dean of Purdue’s College of Pharmacy adds another chapter to the story of Indian-trained researchers shaping American higher education.

The journey of Preeti M. Sivasankar from the University of Bombay to the leadership of a major American college is a useful reminder that the global Indian professional story is not limited to technology, medicine or corporate boardrooms. It can also be found in the laboratories, research offices and academic institutions that determine where science goes next.

On October 1, 2026, Sivasankar became interim dean of Purdue University’s College of Pharmacy, succeeding Eric Barker, who moved into the newly expanded role of senior vice president for health affairs. Purdue says Sivasankar will oversee the college’s teaching, research and engagement missions while working with university stakeholders to strengthen its position among leading pharmacy schools. Purdue University

The appointment comes after she served as Purdue’s vice president for research innovation and headed the Strategic Interdisciplinary Research division in the university’s Office of Research.

What makes her story particularly relevant to Doonited Overseas is where her academic journey began.

Purdue’s own records show that Sivasankar earned both her BS in Audiology and Speech Rehabilitation in 1996 and MS in Speech-Language Pathology in 1998 from the University of Bombay in India, before moving to the United States for a PhD in Communication Sciences and Disorders at Northwestern University, which she completed in 2005.

That makes her career an example of a less discussed form of Indian global mobility: Indian university training becoming the foundation for leadership in a major U.S. research institution.

From Mumbai to Northwestern

Sivasankar’s academic field is quite different from pharmacy at first glance.

Her research has focused on laryngeal physiology, voice disorders and upper-airway physiology, including how the voice and upper airway respond to physiological conditions. Purdue identifies her research programme as being continuously funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, while her faculty profile lists voice across the lifespan, laryngeal physiology and vocal endurance among her research interests. Purdue College of Pharmacy

Her move to the United States therefore did not mean abandoning her original academic discipline.

Instead, it expanded the scale at which she could conduct research.

After completing her PhD at Northwestern, Sivasankar joined Purdue’s faculty in Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences. She became an assistant professor in 2005, associate professor in 2010 and professor in 2014. She also holds a courtesy appointment in Purdue’s Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering and an adjunct appointment in otolaryngology at Indiana University School of Medicine.

That interdisciplinary footprint became increasingly important as her career developed.

A scientist who moved into research leadership

Sivasankar’s progression at Purdue illustrates how an academic researcher can move from a specialist laboratory role into university-wide leadership.

She served as head of Purdue’s Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences from 2019 to 2024. She then became assistant vice president for strategic health research, before being appointed vice president for research innovation in 2024.

In that role, she worked within Purdue’s Office of Research and eventually led its Strategic Interdisciplinary Research division.

The division’s purpose is significant: Purdue describes it as supporting research programmes that cross disciplinary boundaries, generate new knowledge and technologies, and develop the next generation of research leaders. Office of Research

That experience is directly relevant to her new pharmacy role.

Modern pharmaceutical research rarely fits neatly inside one discipline.

Drug discovery can involve chemistry, biology, pharmacology, data science, engineering, clinical research and increasingly artificial intelligence. Translating laboratory discoveries into treatments can require partnerships between universities, healthcare systems, government agencies and pharmaceutical companies.

Sivasankar’s career has increasingly operated in precisely that environment.

The Lilly-Purdue connection

Her new role also places her at the centre of an important university-industry relationship.

Purdue identifies Sivasankar as executive director of the Lilly-Purdue 360 Initiative, in addition to her role as interim dean.

The relationship with Eli Lilly is particularly relevant because Lilly is headquartered in Indiana and has a major research and manufacturing presence in the state.

Purdue’s health strategy is also expanding beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries. Under the leadership changes announced in September, Eric Barker’s new senior vice president role includes executive responsibility for the university’s One Health initiative, while Sivasankar’s pharmacy leadership will operate within the wider health and life-sciences strategy.

The broader direction is clear: Purdue wants its health-related colleges and research programmes to work more closely together.

For Sivasankar, that means the interim deanship is not simply an administrative promotion.

It places a researcher with experience in interdisciplinary science into an institution that is increasingly trying to connect pharmacy, medicine, engineering, research and industry.

Why a speech scientist is leading a pharmacy school

At first, Sivasankar’s research specialty and pharmacy leadership may appear unrelated.

They are not as distant as they seem.

Her scientific work concerns physiological systems, disease mechanisms, clinical research and translational questions. Her administrative career has increasingly focused on how research is organised, funded and connected across disciplines.

A dean does not need to be a specialist in every field represented within a college.

The more important requirement is often the ability to create an environment in which specialists can collaborate, attract research funding, educate students and translate discoveries into practical outcomes.

Purdue’s announcement specifically cited Sivasankar’s deep expertise in healthcare as part of the reason for the appointment.

Her record also includes extensive mentoring.

Purdue has recognised her with awards including its College of Health and Human Sciences Career Research Achievement Award, Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Education and Graduate Mentor Award. She is also a Fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association and an Associate Fellow of the American Laryngological Association.

The Indian connection is more than biography

For Indian readers, the most striking element of Sivasankar’s story is not simply that she is an Indian-origin academic working in America.

It is the educational pathway.

Her first two university degrees were earned in India before she pursued doctoral research in the United States.

That makes her career relevant to an important question for India’s higher-education system:

What happens when talented researchers trained in India become leaders of major global research institutions?

The answer is not necessarily “brain drain.”

The relationship can be more complicated.

Researchers who establish themselves abroad can maintain collaborations, mentor students, participate in international research networks and create institutional bridges between their adopted countries and India.

Sivasankar’s own career illustrates the international nature of contemporary academic science. Her students and collaborators have moved into universities, biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies across the United States and elsewhere, while her own work has involved international academic engagement. Purdue’s CV records, for example, include a visiting academic appointment at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.

The modern diaspora scientist therefore does not necessarily leave one academic ecosystem for another.

They can become part of a much larger global network.

What Purdue’s pharmacy college needs now

The interim designation is important.

Sivasankar has not been announced as the permanent dean. Her immediate task is therefore to maintain the college’s academic and research momentum while working within Purdue’s broader health strategy.

The College of Pharmacy already has a substantial research and educational mission. Its work extends beyond training pharmacists into pharmaceutical sciences, drug discovery, biomedical research, clinical practice and industry partnerships.

Sivasankar will need to balance several priorities:

• maintaining research competitiveness and federal funding;
• strengthening interdisciplinary collaboration;
• supporting faculty and student development;
• connecting research with industry and healthcare;
• ensuring pharmacy education keeps pace with a changing healthcare system;
• and contributing to Purdue’s wider health and life-sciences strategy.

Those priorities make her research-administration experience particularly valuable.

A broader Indian diaspora story

There is a tendency to measure Indian success overseas through highly visible positions: a technology CEO, a surgeon, a university president or a political leader.

Sivasankar’s career points to another route.

She represents the research leadership layer—the scientists who spend years building expertise before eventually helping determine how entire institutions organise knowledge.

Her journey also illustrates the value of India’s higher-education connections with the United States.

An education that began in Mumbai ultimately led to a PhD at Northwestern, a faculty career at Purdue, NIH-funded research, university-wide research leadership and now the interim deanship of a major U.S. College of Pharmacy.

That is not simply an individual success story.

It is a picture of how talent, education and scientific institutions increasingly operate across borders.

The next chapter

Sivasankar’s interim appointment may ultimately prove temporary, but the responsibilities are immediate.

Purdue is building a more integrated health and life-sciences ecosystem, and its College of Pharmacy sits at an important intersection of education, research, healthcare and industry.

The scientist who began her academic journey in Mumbai now has the opportunity to influence how future pharmacists and pharmaceutical researchers are educated in the United States.

For the global Indian community, that trajectory carries a useful lesson.

Migration does not always mean leaving one academic identity behind.

Sometimes it means taking the foundations built in one country, adding new knowledge elsewhere and eventually reaching a position from which an entire institution can benefit.

Preeti Sivasankar’s journey—from the University of Bombay to Purdue’s leadership—shows how Indian-trained scientific talent can become part of the architecture of global research itself.