Govind Rao, PhD

University of Maryland
Professor & Director, Center for Advanced Sensor Technology
Govind Rao is Professor of Chemical & Biochemical Engineering at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He obtained his Bachelor of Technology degree in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras in 1984. His Ph.D. degree was obtained from Drexel University in Chemical Engineering in 1987. He has been a faculty member at UMBC since 1987 and has served as Department Chair from 2000-2006. In 2006, he founded the Center for Advanced Sensor Technology (CAST) and has been serving as its Director since its inception.<br/>

Dr. Rao’s research is targeted towards disruptive innovation, where the goal is to create paradigm shifts in the state-of-the-art. A major effort is the application of sensor technology to reduce healthcare costs and close disparity gaps by making innovative low-cost devices for use in low-resource settings. Another emerging area is point-of-care biomanufacturing. He has published over 180 papers in professional journals. His funding has come from several diverse sources including NSF, NIH, JDRF, DARPA, FDA, ONR, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and from several companies. Dr. Rao has given several invited Keynote and Plenary Lectures at various International Conferences and Corporations. He has served on various government and industry advisory panels.<br/>

He has received several awards. These include the Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation, Outstanding Teaching and Research Awards from UMBC, the Van Lanen Award from the American Chemical Society, the Gaden Award from Biotechnology & Bioengineering, the University System of Maryland Regents Award for Excellence in Research and he has been named a 2003 Innovator of the Year by the Maryland Daily Record. Dr. Rao has several patents, many of which have been licensed. Dr. Rao has served as the Chair of the Biotechnology Division of the American Chemical Society and on the Editorial Board of several prominent journals. In 2007, he was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2009, he was named as Editor of the PDA Journal of Pharmaceutical Science and Technology. In 2015 he received a “50 bright ideas” award from UMBC for the number of inventions filed and named an Eminent Engineer by Tau Beta Pi. He received the 2017 Pioneer Award from Connected World Magazine. The cardboard incubator won the 2019 Academic Pediatric Association Global Health Research Award. He has just been named 2019 Presidential Research Professor at UMBC.