Dr Arun completed his Bachelor of Engineering – Electrical Engineering from the Manipal Institute of Technology, Manipal. He completed his MS (1987) and PhD (1993) in Bioengineering from Clemson University, USA. Arun conducted his doctoral research at the Rush Medical University in Chicago, USA on understanding the etiology of bone resorption around hip and knee replacement implants.

Dr. Arun Shanbhag worked as Chief Innovation Officer at Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal since Jan 2017. Before that, Dr Shanbhag was the Senior Advisor in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital and faculty at the Harvard Medical School.

After graduation in 1993, Dr. Arun Shanbhag continued his research at the University of Pittsburgh, USA. In 1998, Arun was recruited to Harvard Medical School and Mass General Hospital, to lead the Orthopaedic Biomaterials Laboratory. In 2002, he did an Executive MBA from Boston University, while continuing to work at Mass General. Dr. Shanbhag is the recipient of many awards and honors, including the prestigious John Charnley Award by the Hip Society and Partners in Excellence Award for Team Innovations. He has contributed over seventy full-length research publications in International journals and book chapters, and given over a hundred presentations at international meetings, and invited lectures. He is the current recipient of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Grand Challenge Explorations Award.

After joining MAHE as the Chief Innovation Officer in 2017, Dr. Shanbhag inspired students to develop innovations to solve local problems. The Innovation Center organizes a variety of competitions and challenges where students develop interdisciplinary teams, come up with socially relevant innovation, develop working prototypes and are guided on the path of entrepreneurship. The Innovation Center has a stellar record of student-led startups, several of which have received venture funding.