Ubaldo M. Córdova Figueroa, PhD

Entrepreneurship & Innovation | Chemical Engineering | Strategic Doing

San Juan, PR

Dr. Ubaldo M. Córdova Figueroa is the Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Research at the University of Puerto Rico (UPR). He is a professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez Campus (RUM). He also serves as an adjunct professor in the Department of Physics, in the Bioengineering graduate program and in the Computer Science and Computer Engineering graduate program. Prior to becoming Executive Vice President, Dr. Córdova served as Special Assistant to the Provost for Research, Innovation and Creative Work and Coordinator of the RUM Research Academy. He is one of the main architects of the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem at the campus. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Puerto Rico Science, Technology & Research Trust since August 2019.

As Executive Vice President and under the direction of President Dr. Jorge Haddock, Dr. Córdova has developed strategies at the nexus of academic innovation, administrative transformation, research and entrepreneurship to foster student success. He has made it a cornerstone of his tenure to promote entrepreneurship, visibility and systematic collaboration.

His efforts to date have resulted in securing funding to advance various initiatives such as the Advancing Science and Technology Research and Entrepreneurship Center. This infrastructure initiative will take place at the UPR Molecular Sciences Research Center and is funded by the U.S. Economic Development Administration. He also coordinated the BLUE Tide initiative, another $9.6 million EDA-funded project, which seeks to develop the fundamentals of the blue economy in the Caribbean and the insertion of the UPR in promoting an important chapter of the Recovery Plan for Puerto Rico.

As a researcher, Dr. Córdova is co-leader of a $20 million NSF grant for the use of artificial intelligence in the design of materials for wearable devices. Over the past several years, he has received grants of over $1.3 million from NSF and other federal agencies, including the prestigious CAREER Award. Dr. Cordova is an expert in the theoretical design and engineering of reconfigurable materials. Currently, Dr. Córdova’s research team has four members.

Dr. Córdova holds an M.S. and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology and a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from RUM. He has authored or co-authored more than 20 publications. Among them, three were published in Soft Matter and featured on the front and back cover.