When Rathindra Bose was selected as the vice president and vice chancellor for research and technology transfer, he had one goal in mind: to attract more money to research at UH. Ever since, he has been extremely successful at coming up with millions of dollars to pay for a “building and hiring spree” to attract newcomers to UH.
Bose
Bose received his Ph.D. degree in chemistry from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., in 1982. He received a master’s degree in chemistry from the Rajshahi University in Bangladesh in 1975 and a bachelor’s degree in chemistry with honors from the same institution in 1973. He has one issued patent and three patent applications on cancer drugs and fuel cell electro-catalysts pending at the U.S. Patent and Trademark office. After overlooking 3,500 graduate students, a budget of more than $35 million, $68 million in research programs and a tech transfer office with more than $8 million in royalties at Ohio University, Bose came to Houston.
“We are identifying our top 10 technologies out of all the patents we have,” said Bose in an interview with Xconomy. “We are doing well in health sciences and in the energy area. This year we’ll be getting over $15 million in royalty income and that will come from both pharmaceutical products and a variety of energy technology.
“My projection is that in the next five years we might be able to get $50 million a year. When I arrived here two years ago it was $8 million a year. We have had an almost 100 percent increase.”
Bose took the initiative to take a proposal to the Board of Regents to create more research buildings, and asked the chancellor to assign 60 new faculty positions for the science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields. He said hiring this type of faculty requires a significant financial commitment to set up their laboratories.
“We also want to create core facilities that many faculty members can come and share,” Bose said in the article.
In addition to spending his time and effort on coming up with ways to spend money wisely while still purchasing the best “tools and toys” for UH labs, Bose is working on superconducting technology developed by SuperPower, a subsidiary of Furakawa Electric Company of Japan. SuperPower is working with UH faculty as graduate students and postdocs perform mass production of superconducting wires and cable. This is a nine-layer technology and is 300 times more efficient than copper wire.
