The Robert Fletcher Award is given annually to a graduate or friend of Thayer School in recognition of distinguished achievement and service in the highest tradition of the School. The award is named in honor of Robert Fletcher, who was appointed by Sylvanus Thayer as the School's first professor of engineering and its first director (1871–1918). The Dean of Thayer School chooses each year's award recipient who then traditionally delivers Thayer School's Investiture speech.

Subra Suresh

The 2013 Robert Fletcher Award recipient is Subra Suresh, President-Elect of Carnegie Mellon University and Former Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Suresh has been selected as the ninth President of Carnegie Mellon University effective July 2013. He was nominated by President Barack Obama and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the director of NSF where he served from 2010 to 2013. Previously, Suresh was dean of the School of Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he has been the Vannevar Bush Professor.

Suresh has been elected to ten different science/engineering academies in the U.S., Sweden, Germany, Spain and India including the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has been selected for eight honorary degrees from universities in the U.S., Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, and India. He is the author of nearly 250 journal publications, 20 patents and three books.

At NSF, he established a number of new initiatives including INSPIRE, the NSF Career-Life Balance Initiative, Partnerships for Enhanced Engagements in Research, the NSF Science Across Virtual Institutes (SAVI) Program, Graduate Research Opportunities Worldwide (GROW), and the NSF Innovation Corps.