Paul Cherukuri will serve the University of Virginia as its first Chief Innovation Officer and the Donna and Richard Tadler University Professor of Entrepreneurship. He will also hold faculty appointments in the School of Engineering and Applied Science and the McIntire School of Commerce.
Cherukuri will take the helm of UVA Innovates, the pan-University platform launched in 2024 to foster innovation and entrepreneurship among students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community partners. Cherukuri will lead the next phase of the development of a University-wide innovation ecosystem—fostering cross-school collaboration, empowering faculty and students to translate ideas into impact, and expanding partnerships with industry, government, and regional stakeholders. This initiative reflects UVA’s commitment to excellence, entrepreneurship, and driving positive change on both a local and global scale.
Cherukuri served as the inaugural Vice President for Innovation and Chief Innovation Officer at Rice University since 2022. At Rice, Cherukuri spearheaded initiatives that redefined the university’s innovation enterprise, from launching the Rice Biotech Launch Pad and RBL LLC to rapidly advance lifesaving technologies, to forging the $12.5 million Woodside-Rice Decarbonization Accelerator to transform greenhouse gases into next-generation materials, and creating the Rice Nexus hub at Houston’s Ion District to scale AI-driven startups—efforts that firmly positioned Rice and Houston at the forefront of global innovation. Prior to this, he served as executive director of Rice’s Institute of Biosciences and Bioengineering, forging interdisciplinary research partnerships with federal agencies and corporations and securing nearly $37 million to accelerate the development of new technologies into commercial products.
A physicist, chemist and medical technology entrepreneur, Cherukuri brings experience in academia, industry, and start-ups. He earned his bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Kentucky and his Ph.D. in physical chemistry at Rice. Before returning to Rice in 2014, Cherukuri was a visiting scholar in chemistry at Harvard University and in Experimental Therapeutics at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. He was also a co-founder and chief technical officer of MAReNIR Technologies LLC and a senior scientist at Sanofi, where he developed drug products and biomedical devices.