Santokh Badesha, Adjunct Professor for Innovation with Purdue University’s Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Santokh Badesha, Adjunct Professor for Innovation with Purdue University’s Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has been elected to the rank of fellow with the National Academy of Inventors (NAI). Badesha is a corporate fellow and manager of open innovation at Xerox, where he currently is the all-time record holder for U.S. patents. He has generated patented technology that is used in nearly all major Xerox printing system families. Badesha is internationally recognized for inventing technologies that have ushered in the era of digital printing on demand. He holds 258 issued U.S. patents and an additional 55 at different stages of the patenting process.

Badesha’s patents cover foundational printing technologies. Some of the most noteworthy include:

• Photoreceptors — the core elements in laser printing as it becomes conductive wherever it is exposed to light. Badesha’s patents allowed both the precise tuning of light sensitivity to the relevant IR laser bands to improve performance and enable the use of lower power lasers, significantly lowering the cost and environmental footprint of laser printers.
• Fuser subsystems — melt and adhere the polymeric colored toners once they are transferred to paper in a visible image. His contributions improved the lifetime of high-temperature fusers by lowering wear and maintaining the low surface energy necessary for function.
• Intermediate transfer belts — used in nearly all color laser printing systems that involve building a color image from four different colored toners.

Badesha has worked across government, academia and industry to open new opportunities for technological innovation and commercial successes. He currently serves as a trustee of the New York State Fuzehub Manufacturing Collaborative, which connects New York State manufacturers to academic and industry experts to accelerate R&D and productivity solutions.

In 2021, he was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering, “for developing materials enabling the broad use of laser printing and the creation of color laser printing.” Badesha was named an honorary member of the Society for Imaging Science and Technology. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and Society of Imaging Science & Technology. He was named a chartered scientist by the Science Council of U.K. and received the Distinguished Inventor of the Year Award from the Rochester Intellectual Property Law Association. Badesha is the recipient of many awards from Xerox, including being inducted into the Xerox Innovation Group Hall of Fame.

The NAI Fellows Program, according to its website, highlights academic inventors who have demonstrated a prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development, and the welfare of society. Election to NAI Fellow status is the highest professional distinction accorded solely to academic inventors. This year’s selections bring the number of Purdue Engineering NAI Fellows to 12; as a whole, Purdue has a total of 17 fellows. Purdue ECE faculty who were previously elected to NAI Fellows status include Jan P. Allebach, the Hewlett-Packard Distinguished Professor of ECE, Alexandra Boltasseva, Ron and Dotty Garvin Tonjes Professor of ECE, Charles Bouman, the Showalter Professor of ECE, Mung Chiang, the Roscoe H. George Distinguished Professor of ECE and the John A. Edwardson Dean of Engineering, Haiyan Wang, Basil S. Turner Professor of Engineering, and and Andrew M. Weiner, Scifres Family Distinguished Professor of ECE.

NAI boasts more than 1,400 fellows worldwide representing more than 250 universities and governmental non-profit research institutes. The recipients hold more than 48,000 issued U.S. patents, which have generated more than 13,000 licensed technologies, 3,200 companies, and created more than 1 million jobs. Additionally, more than $3 trillion in revenue has been generated from NAI Fellow discoveries.

Source: CoE's Badesha, Malshe, Wang named Fellows of the National Academy of Inventors