UTRF names new VP for its Multi-Campus Office
Kusum Rathore, a former UTRF Technology Manager, has returned to the organization after nearly a year at Thermo Fisher Scientific.
Kusum Rathore has been named the new Vice President of the University of Tennessee Research Foundation’s (UTRF) Multi-Campus Office, succeeding Maha Krishnamurthy who held the position for five years before being promoted to UTRF President this past January.
Before assuming her new position, Rathore spent five years at UTRF as a Licensing Assistant and later Technology Manager. Most recently, she was an Innovation and Commercialization Manager with Thermo Fisher Scientific. Rathore holds a doctorate in Oncology and Cancer Biology from UT, Knoxville (UTK); a Master of Science in Biomedical Sciences from Delhi University; and a Bachelor of Science in Microbiology from the University of Rajasthan.
Following a post-doctoral fellowship at UTK, Rathore accepted a short-term role as a Senior Scientist at 490 BioTech, a UTRF start-up. Through this position, she was introduced to UTRF and entered tech transfer. After working for UTRF, Rathore joined Thermo Fisher Scientific where she managed a portfolio of novel manufacturing and analytical platform technologies utilized in the manufacture and testing of advanced cellular therapies.
“As a child, I was fascinated with human health and wanted to be a doctor. But as I got into my graduate studies, my focus changed,” said Rathore. “My dad used to joke and tell me I should go into medicine, but I remember telling him, ‘I don’t want to write prescriptions; I want to discover new medications.’ While I am not discovering new medications, I am helping in the successful commercialization of various technologies discovered and developed at UT.”
