Prof. Rajesh Dave is currently a Distinguished Professor of Chemical and Materials Engineering at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), USA.
After receiving his B.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Bombay, he got his MS in Mechanical Engineering in 1981 and his PhD – also in Mechanical Engineering – in 1983 from Utah State University.
Prof. Dave’s contributions include establishing and managing multi disciplinary large-scale research programs through leveraging government and industry funding, leading to the formation of two NJ state-funded Centres and two US National Science Foundation (NSF) funded Centres. These initiatives have made a significant impact on particle technology and pharmaceutical sciences through linking particle-scale properties to particulate materials’ behaviour, leading to a better understanding of their formation, processing, and cost-efficient manufacturing to achieve higher quality products.
Examples of the above include fundamental understanding of the effect of surface modification of pharmaceutical drug or excipientparticles, surface energetics of
milling, functionalization and stabilization of nano and low micron sized drug particle suspensions and their dry composites preserving their high surface area, and
development of patient compliant platform technologies for taste masking and thin polymeric films. Prof. Dave’s research contributions include 200+ journal papers (16,600+ Google citations, H-Index 69), as well as 23 issued patents, including licensing of several. He has mentored and trained 100+ graduate students, 80+ undergraduate students, ~30 postdoctoral fellows and visiting scholars (majority are placed in academia), ~100 high school science teachers, and most importantly, granted 38 PhD degrees to his students, seven of those have been placed in US academia.
He has been the recipient of several accolades over his storied career in academics. These include:
– Distinguished Professor, Otto York Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, New Jersey. (July 2006 – present)
– Founding Director, Centre for Integrated Materials Science and Engineering of Pharmaceutical Products (CIMSEPP – an NSFIUCRC). (March 2022 – present)
– Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Senior Research Scholar, Mechanical Engineering Department, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.(September 2018 – May 2019)
– Founding Director, New Jersey Centre for Engineered Particulates, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, New Jersey. (September 2000 – present)
– Site Leader, Thrust Leader, and a Test-bed Leader, National Science Foundation Engineering Research Centre on Structured Organic Particulate Systems (ERC-SOPS) for Pharmaceutical Industry, a Rutgers (lead), Purdue, NJIT, and UPRM partnership. (July 2006 – June 2019)
– Professor, Associate Professor, Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, New Jersey. (September 1985 – June 2006)
– Associate Director, Particle Processing Research Centre, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, New Jersey. (March 1997 – 2001)
– Visiting Professor, Coastal and Oceanographic Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida. (Feb. 1995 – July 1995)
– Visiting Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri. (Aug. 1994 – Dec. 1994) He has also received several awards.
He is an elected Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), the American Association of Pharmaceutical Engineers (AAPS), and the US National Academy of Inventors (NAI). In 2022, he won the AIChE PD2M Award for Outstanding Contribution to QbD for Drug Product. He received the Fulbright Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Award in Research (2018-19), the 2018 Chairman’s Award from the R&D Council of New Jersey, the 2016 Thomas Alva Edison Patent Award (in the Enabling Technology category), the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame 2015 Innovators Award, the AIChE PTF Fluidization Lectureship (2015), Board of Overseers Excellence in Research Prize and Medal, and the New Jersey Institute of Technology, October 2016.
Any other interesting fact about yourself that you would like to share: I turned vegan over a dozen years ago.
Hobbies: Traveling and enjoying food. Spending time with my wife and daughter. Occasionally listening to Jazz and Blues.