Suresh Balu

Suresh Balu
Associate Dean for Innovation and Partnership

Suresh Balu serves as Associate Dean for Innovation and Partnership for the School of Medicine and as Program Director, for the Duke Institute for Health Innovation (DIHI)

 In his role as Associate Dean, Suresh is responsible for creating, implementing, and sustaining innovation and partnership initiatives for the School of Medicine, specifically, to support the strategic priorities for clinical and translational research.  As Program Director for DIHI, Suresh works closely with Duke Health leadership to develop innovation frameworks and approaches across healthcare delivery, education and research. His responsibilities include, strategic evaluation of opportunities, developing competitive landscape for healthcare and research initiatives, complex strategic, operational and financial analyses and recommendations for Duke Health leadership and corporate development for global and US-based collaborations as they relate to an innovation platform.

Suresh’s experience prior to Duke spans academia, management consulting, venture capital and private equity. As a corporate and competitive strategy consultant, Suresh worked with leading life sciences and technology firms to develop strategies for innovation, revenue generation, organizational restructuring and product portfolio planning. His PE/VC experiences include product and technology due diligence, deal structuring and portfolio company management. As an entrepreneur, Suresh was responsible for program management, market and product strategy at a venture-funded firm that focused on visualization and diagnostic products. Suresh has operational and business development experience in Asia and Europe, where he helped to establish sales channels serving government and academic clients. He is an inventor named on more than 20 US and international patents.

Suresh holds MS (Computer Science) and MBA (Corporate Finance) degrees as well as a Master’s degree in Informatics and Bachelor’s degree in Engineering.