Dear Rice community,
When I became president in 2022, Rice recommitted to the goal of enhancing and growing our research enterprise. For that reason, one of my first priority hires was to attract a world-renowned scholar with deep expertise in academia, industry, national labs and government service to Rice as our inaugural executive vice president for research. We were extraordinarily fortunate to recruit my colleague, the pioneering condensed matter physicist and materials scientist Ramamoorthy Ramesh, from the University of California, Berkeley, to this role.
In short order, Ramesh partnered with Rice’s senior leadership, deans, faculty and staff to bolster the university’s research infrastructure and propel its productivity to new heights. Today, I write to share that Ramesh will soon transition away from his administrative duties at Rice and return to the faculty and his extensive research program.
Ramesh has enjoyed championing the research enterprise for this exceptional university, and we are fortunate for his leadership. At this pivotal time for the future of research, he relishes the opportunity to rededicate himself to the next discoveries that will be made in his lab and research group. Ramesh’s research pursues key material physics and technological problems in complex multifunctional oxides with applications to the energy sector and contributions to advanced materials discovery and their impact on technology.
Under Ramesh’s leadership, Rice’s research efforts experienced tremendous success, with Rice’s sponsored research funding growing by 6.5% in fiscal year 2023 and a nationally significant 14.5% in fiscal year 2024. In addition to rejuvenating the existing Rice institutes including the Smalley-Curl Institute, the Ken Kennedy Institute, Rice360 and the Space Institute, he helped create six new research institutes, including the Rice Advanced Materials Institute, Medical Humanities Research Institute, Synthetic Biology Institute (which evolved from the Institute for Biosciences and Bioengineering), Sustainability Institute, Institute of Health Resilience and Innovation, and WaTER Institute; and created several new centers, including the Cancer Bioengineering Collaborative with MD Anderson Cancer Center, Center for Coastal Futures and Adaptive Resilience, and the Center for Voting Operations, Technology, Equality and Security. He also partnered with the Office of Innovation to support the launch of the Rice Biotech Accelerator.
Ramesh was also instrumental in tirelessly promoting our faculty for highly prestigious national and international awards. During his time, our rate of election to the prestigious National Academy of Engineering, National Academy of Sciences and American Academy of Arts and Sciences more than doubled.
In partnership with Vice President for Global Caroline Levander, Ramesh was also critical in forging strong, durable research partnerships with world-class universities in India and France such as IISc and Paris Sciences et Lettres.
I would like to thank Ramesh for his rigorous efforts and infectious optimism and energy. Through his work, Rice’s research programs have scaled new heights, boosting Rice into the upper echelons of the world’s great research universities, all while elevating the national profile of our graduate programs and fortifying our unwavering commitment to offer the finest undergraduate education in the United States — and at an affordable value. Moreover, Ramesh has brought a level of excitement and ambition needed to take Rice research to still higher levels in the future.
Soon, we will launch an international search for the next executive vice president for research and share details on that process with the community. A search committee, led by Dean of Engineering and Computing Luay Nakhleh, has been appointed to help us identify the next leader for the research enterprise, a responsibility that is particularly important at this consequential time for research, scholarship and creative expression at Rice and elsewhere.
Please join us in thanking Ramesh for his energetic leadership and wishing him the very best in his future successes.
Warmly,
President Reginald DesRoches