Richard Descoings, Head of French university found dead in the nude in Manhattan hotel room

Richard Descoings, pictured on April 11, 2010, was found dead in his Midtown Manhattan hotel room on Tuesday

NYPD Crime Scene Unit truck is parked outside the Michelangelo Hotel, where Richard Descoings,a noted French political scientist, was found dead in his room on Tuesday.

A prominent French scholar was found dead in a midtown hotel room Tuesday, lying nude on the bed, cops said.

Detectives were treating Richard Descoings’ death in as suspicious after finding his cell phone on a third-floor landing as if “it had been tossed out the window” of his seventh-floor room, a police source said.

Descoings, director of the prestigious Institute of Political Studies in Paris, was found dead about 1 p.m. in his room at the Michelangelo Hotel.

A staffer at the W. 51st St. hotel discovered Descoings naked on his bed after his worried colleagues asked to have the room checked when he failed to show up at a morning conference at Columbia University.

“We haven’t ruled out foul play,” said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne. “We’re investigating the possibility if there was somebody else in the room.”

But two police sources said it did not appear that Descoings was murdered.

Browne said there was no obvious trauma on the 52-year-old political scientist’s body and no sign of forced entry into his room. Hotel staffers told cops he checked in alone, Browne said.

Prescription drugs were found in the room, but it is unclear what role — if any — they played in Descoings’ death, a source said.

Police believe Descoings may have been alive as late as 9 a.m. Tuesday, when hotel staff heard what sounded like snoring through his door.

Disgraced former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn once worked at the Institute of Political studies, commonly called “Sciences Po,” as a professor.