2016 Excellence in Research Prize and Medal Recipient
The NJIT Board of Overseers is proud to award Dr. Rajesh N. Davé, distinguished professor in the Otto H. York Department of Chemical, Biological and Pharmaceutical Engineering, its ninth annual Excellence in Research Prize and Medal. View the six-minute video overview of Dr. Davé's wide-ranging and internationally recognized research here, after the Oct. 6 presentation of the award.
October 6, 2016
Rajesh N. Davé is a distinguished professor in the Otto H. York Department of Chemical, Biological and Pharmaceutical Engineering. His research contributions to date include over 140 journal papers and numerous invited and keynote presentations, as well as 10 issued and approximately a dozen pending patents. His current research expertise includes engineered particulates with special emphasis on pharmaceutical products. He has granted 28 Ph.D.s to students at NJIT, six of whom are currently in U.S. academia, and has received numerous awards, most recently the 2015 AIChE PTF Lectureship Award in Fluidization. He also has been engaged in technology development and transfer activities in the film coating of very fine particles, bioavailability enhancement and taste-masking. His work in taste-masking solventless coating technology has been commercially licensed by a global pharma company for the purpose of taste-masking as well as the controlled release of drugs.
Dr. Davé is the Founding Director of the R&D Excellence Center at the New Jersey Center for Engineered Particulates, where he focuses on research and innovations in particle engineering for improved particle properties for applications to pharmaceutical, food, electronics and energy industries. Under his direction, the Center has developed into an important resource for researchers and industry alike in the areas of nanoparticles and nanocomposites. It provides state-of-the-art equipment for processing and characterizing particles at the nano and submicron levels, and researchers work in partnership with industry to develop tailored particulate materials with unique properties for industry applications. Center research in particle engineering has led to attracting funds from the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other federal agencies as well as industry. These activities have also led to NJIT’s first-ever participation in an NSF-funded Engineering Research Center (ERC) on Structured Organic Particulate Systems with a focus on improved materials and manufacturing science for pharmaceutical products. In this NSF-ERC, Dr. Davé is a site leader, a research thrust leader and a leader of a particle engineering-based technology platform testbed on drug laden thin films.
His NSF-ERC leadership roles have significantly impacted the pharmaceutical industry through aligning high-quality research with National Academy of Engineering and NIH goals that include better medicines, medications the body can absorb and process efficiently and designing therapies and dosages that are more precise and flexible. These advancements are expected to have a broad societal impact through improved patient care, patient compliance and comfort and reduced manufacturing costs. Ongoing commercialization activities of transformative technologies are expected to make an impact in the long run at a level of over $5 billion per year.