In a fireside chat at Startup Bazaar, Secretary Sanjay Rai outlines bold plans to embed innovation, AI literacy, and workforce alignment into Maryland’s colleges and universities.
Dr. Sanjay Rai, Maryland’s Secretary of Higher Education, is at the forefront of reshaping the role of colleges and universities in an economy driven by innovation, entrepreneurship, and emerging technologies. Appointed to the cabinet post in May 2024, Rai previously served as the Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs at Montgomery College, where he spearheaded initiatives in biotechnology, cybersecurity, and workforce development. A mathematician by training, he holds a doctoral degree from the University of Arkansas and has been recognized with awards such as the Chief Academic Officer of the Year and the Leadership Montgomery Outstanding Leader Award.
READ: Lt. Gov. Aruna Miller to headline Startup Bazaar at University of Maryland on April 12 (April 10, 2025)
At the Startup Bazaar held at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business on April 12, Rai participated in a fireside chat with Michael Hoffmeyer, Managing Director of the Dingman-Lamone Center for Entrepreneurship. In a candid, wide-ranging conversation, Rai discussed the evolving role of higher education in Maryland’s innovation ecosystem, the state’s commitment to entrepreneurship, and how educational institutions can better align with industry to prepare students for the future.
The conversation below has been edited lightly for clarity.
Michael Hoffmeyer: Secretary Rai, you’ve led at both institutional and state levels. How do you see the role of higher education evolving in Maryland’s innovation economy?
Sanjay Rai: First of all, let me thank the University of Maryland, the School of Business, Dean Prabhudev and Michael from the Dingman Center, and American Bazaar for bringing all of us together. We are here because of all of you. Thank you for this wonderful platform to have some really relevant and meaningful conversations. Although my LG is not here, let’s thank her also for her time on Saturday. She was supposed to be here for 10 minutes. She spent time here, and then she also spoke to prospective EMBA students at the School of Business. I’m pretty sure most of them will join, and I’ll see them in fall.
So let’s talk about the idea of bridging innovation and higher education in Maryland. I’ll give you some examples of innovations that have helped our economy that started from our higher education institutions. If you look at Google’s AlphaFold, the AI2 deep mind, it has its origins in the computer science side of this institution. If you think of Google, it has its own original history here. When you look at human genome sequencing, that happened in Maryland and resulted in what we called DNA alley in the I-270 corridor. We were there just a few days ago and it’s really the nucleus of higher education, government, and business sectors. But at the same time, being in higher education, I will also say that often we are not proactive, and often we are slow to react.
In Maryland, we are changing that. For instance, there used to be a very lengthy process to change a curriculum proposal that was approved by the state. We have removed that process. Any institution that wants to modify its curriculum to align with business and industries can now change 50% of its curriculum without coming to the Maryland Higher Education Commission.
Michael Hoffmeyer: Very nice. So, what are some effective ways you’ve seen universities support entrepreneurship both inside and outside the classroom?
Sanjay Rai: We’ve certainly seen this happen at the Dingman Center. But I will also say that every student who graduates from any institution in the state of Maryland is an entrepreneur. We are in the business of producing entrepreneurs. That’s our mindset. There are specialized programs like this across institutions, Dingman Center here, Montgomery College has one, other institutions have one, other universities have one. But our objective is to embed entrepreneurship in everything that we do. Every course. If you’re taking a course in art, how can you start your art business, right? How do you convert our students’ mindset from being employees of a certain company to being an employer? So that’s where we are trying to get.
Michael Hoffmeyer: Excellent. So, in your view, how can higher ed better connect with entrepreneurs and startup founders across the state?
Sanjay Rai: Higher education has to lead by example. We are not known for entrepreneurship. We have to be entrepreneurial. We have to think about removing the bureaucracy. We have to learn from business. We have to learn from entrepreneurs. We have to learn that we should also take risks. The example I gave you, how we are modifying our curriculum approval process, those are the things. That’s the entrepreneurial mindset. You heard a lot about artificial intelligence. So in the state of Maryland, several quantum computing masters, PhD programs, AI undergraduate program, masters in AI programs are being approved very routinely. But that’s not where we want to end. We want to make sure that every student who graduates with a degree from an institution in the state of Maryland has some basic understanding of artificial intelligence. So artificial intelligence should be part of what you call a “general education” program. It’s just like you learn your communication, English, math, and other things. These skills, which are highly desirable by employers, become part of general education. Then once you move to your major and you are majoring in art, you should have that understanding of how artificial intelligence impacts art. If we succeed, then we have enhanced the value of every credential that we offer. And hence, our graduates are more competitive than the graduates from other institutions. So we are on our way to do these things. We’re going to shift gears for just a moment and talk about aligning education with industry needs. We need talent, and higher ed produces a great deal of that talent.
Michael Hoffmeyer: So how is Maryland ensuring that students graduate with the skills that innovative companies, especially startups, need? So you partially answered that with the last question, but I’ll pose it anyway.
Sanjay Rai: We are certainly understanding what are the desirable skills by employers and making sure that those skills are embedded throughout your curriculum. It’s not just that computer science has a lot of jobs, so a degree in computer science is good. But is Google interested in what we are teaching in computer science? So we look at light cost data for every program. If employers in computer science or cybersecurity are saying they require these five skills, we want to make sure that when a student takes certain courses, they have those skills. So by the time students graduate, they should have a skills resume and also a credentials resume, a transcript where you have grades for the courses, but a parallel transcript that should say that you have these skills that businesses and industry need as well.
Michael Hoffmeyer: Okay, what kind of partnerships between higher education and industry have proven most impactful in workforce development?
Sanjay Rai: So certainly, understanding what businesses and industries need. At the same time, internships, experiential learning opportunities, that’s another thing. We want to make sure that every academic program provides experiential learning opportunities for students. Apprenticeship, we want to be the number one state in apprenticeships in the country, and we are on our way. A lot of companies have joined the apprenticeship program. A lot of state dollars are being infused into those programs. Then we want to make sure that our businesses and industries are not only giving advice on what the curriculum should be, but they are also hearing from us. If a student graduates from a school of engineering, they have four years. Those four years are crammed with so many very complicated subjects…100, 200 years of human innovation are covered in four years. Often businesses want these students to have the life skills of 40-year-old people, they should be able to work in a team, this, that, right? So understanding both sides, I think, is important.
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A lot of our faculty should come from business and industry. When I created some programs at Montgomery College, biotechnology and genome sequencing were happening. We brought faculty from industry. They came on a part-time basis and they taught. We brought scientists from NIH and NASA to teach at the college. Curriculum is one thing, but can we bring the people who are creating this knowledge into our classrooms? People who are implementing the new knowledge, creating products, how can they come into our classrooms? Industry experts doing a sabbatical, reverse sabbatical, spending some time in our institutions of higher education, there are different ways of doing that. Some are very cost-intensive and some are low-cost, you can do that. And our faculty doing residencies in business and industries, think about that, how wonderful that would be.
During my time at the Germantown campus of Montgomery College, we built the first hospital ever built on the campus of a community college. There are about 150 students every year from Montgomery College who get what is called clinical rotation opportunities at Holy Cross Hospital right on the campus. The hospital was given more than half a million dollars just for programmatic expansions. Imagine the shortage of nurses that we have today, or when we build a hospital. This was 2010, 2011, and we said, well, if there is a COVID type of challenge, we will have to change. We don’t have enough hospitals, at least in the upper part of Montgomery County, so our students or hospitals became a huge asset. That’s where we see higher education aligning with business and industries, and at the same time addressing the issues of your community.
Michael Hoffmeyer: Great, so speaking of community colleges, what role do you see community colleges and regional campuses playing in developing entrepreneurial talent?
Sanjay Rai: All of us have to create entrepreneurial talent. Regional universities, you know, I will never use the word flagship universities, but all universities are engaged. Community colleges are also engaged. They not only create entrepreneurs, but many of our entrepreneurs go to community colleges for upskilling. So Montgomery College, for many years, had a program where folks who came out of NIH after their postdoc experience would go and take entrepreneurship courses. Then, they can start life sciences companies. Or a lot of our life sciences companies, hundreds of them, are started by faculty and scientists. We love our research, we want to protect it, right, we don’t want to market things, right, we don’t want to share all that, right, and we don’t want to take risks, and we don’t know how to navigate this business thing. So community colleges, including Montgomery College, were teaching courses to help scientists lead their companies. Since I’m in the Smith School of Business, a lot of our MBA programs were not designed initially to lead high-tech companies. If you’re leading life sciences companies in this day and age, cell therapy and all that, you have to know gene editing, basically what that is, before you lead that. It’s not that a general MBA, you can lead any company, like today’s CEOs of these companies come from the background and the content area.
Let’s take the CEO of Google, why is he CEO of Google, Satya Nadella, no, yeah, Sundar Pachai, because he was lead engineer for Google Chrome. Satya Nadella is also an engineer, right, and he’s CEO of Microsoft, why is that? Because as a very young engineer, he suggested the idea of cloud engineering at some high-level meeting at Microsoft. At that time, Microsoft had 90 percent of the business, and folks who are not from that engineering background, mostly management background, decided it’s not a good idea. Because we have 90 percent of the market, why should we invest in this cloud thing, which we don’t know what it is, right? And luckily at that time, Bill Gates was in that meeting, and he didn’t say much at the meeting, but later on, he went to Satya’s office, and he said, tell me what this cloud computing is, and he was given the responsibility to lead the cloud computing at Microsoft. Can you imagine Microsoft today, just with their desktop computers, right? Their cloud business is pretty important, and everyone wants to be in the cloud today, right? So the folks who have this technical knowledge, scientific knowledge, knowledge that is creating new businesses, new industries, the management of those industries will also come from the same people.
So community colleges and other institutions of higher education are important. CEOs don’t have time to stop their business for two years and get a degree, right? How do we create a training program that fits their needs and in the most affordable manner? That’s happening at our community colleges and at other institutions as well.
Michael Hoffmeyer: Fantastic. So we’re going to switch gears again to talk a little bit about building bridges between academia, government, and startups. So what opportunities exist for entrepreneurs to collaborate with Maryland’s higher education institutions, whether through research, talent, or joint initiatives? So let me first say this.
Sanjay Rai: As Secretary of Higher Education, one of my goals is to make sure that a lot of startups are coming from our institutions of higher education. Great research is happening at our institutions of higher education. A lot of IP is being created. A lot of patents are being created, and many of them have strong market potential. How do we support our faculty in becoming entrepreneurs? How do we provide seed funding to faculty who can take their idea as a startup and then go to the market? TEDCO funds a lot in the state of Maryland. Millions of dollars go towards this funding. We’re working so that some of that could be available to startups that are coming from our institutions of higher education. And the other thing that is happening that I will thank Prabhu from Smith School of Business for…the state government is coming to the Smith School of Business for consulting and advice and, so far, it’s free. So the state government is a big business too, billions of dollars, right?
Let me give you one example that is very, very relevant. BWI Airport, you should always fly out of BWI, it’s a great experience. Parking is easy, getting in, getting out is easy, right? But that needs an expansion. I mean, they are having record visitors from there now, right? Passenger load is higher, and we are very happy about it. So we have to expand that, right? How do you expand that? What are the economic implications of expanding that airport? It’s all very good, right? But what about the people who live there? They have noise pollution, those kinds of things. How do you balance? How do you come up with a strategy for a win-win situation? So we came to Smith School of Business for that advice, and they’re working on it, and they will give us good advice. And we’ll expand our airport to make sure that people who live there are completely supported. At the same time, all of you are flying from BWI.
Michael Hoffmeyer: So are there state-level programs or incentives that entrepreneurs should know about if they want to engage with universities or with students from universities?
Sanjay Rai: There are as many programs. I will tell you, go and look at TEDCO’s website. I looked at this before coming to today’s conference. There are several programs, several programs from TEDCO, several programs from our Department of Commerce. And these are not small programs, millions and millions of dollars. Then our local government, Montgomery County, Prince George’s County, they have significant programs. They all have business incubators. Montgomery County has several business incubators. One in Germantown, Maryland, is just for life sciences companies. Very easy to get in, very easy to get in. And seed funding, $50,000, grant, loan, whatever you want to call it, that’s also very easy to get. And again, if you are meeting for expertise in legal areas or you are looking for some scientific industries or if you have something that you have to take to clinical trials, all those supports and networks are available at those business incubators.
So I’ll just echo Secretary Rice’s comments about TEDCO. I came here from another state, and the support that the state provides for entrepreneurs here in the state of Maryland is nothing sort of amazing. So if you’re not aware of TEDCO, you should be aware and you should start networking with them. They’re the most active venture capital organization in the state. So there’s a ton of state support. Let me add one. If you are in business, a startup in stem cells, anything related to stem cells, the state of Maryland funds a stem cell foundation. They give about $20 million every year to stem cell-related companies. And several of the companies that our stem cell foundation has funded are looking very, very promising. And some of them have the potential of becoming household names in a few years.
Michael Hoffmeyer: So how can we encourage more cross-pollination between faculty researchers, entrepreneurs, and industry, especially in the tech and science-driven sectors?
Sanjay Rai: Let me say this. There is no one way to do this. You have to do several things. But what’s happening today in this room is one great, great example. Everyone is here. The LG was here. All of us are here. Our entrepreneurs are here. And certainly, our higher education is here. So these kinds of events are something that we need. And certainly, more opportunities for networking and conversation is helpful. But again, in the Moore-Miller administration, we have a whole-of-government approach, no silos. So I am here. My colleague Secretary Choudhury is here. Often, my colleagues from Commerce and Labor, we all travel together. And we work very, very closely, not just with the chancellor and all, we work with deans, department chairs, and faculty. This is a change. I have been in higher education in the state of Maryland for 20 years. I didn’t see this kind of connection where the entire government is only a phone call, an email, or text message away. So we have a government that works for you.
Michael Hoffmeyer: So it’s a great segue. We’re going to talk a little bit more about a broader vision for Maryland. What’s your long-term vision for Maryland as a hub for innovation and entrepreneurship?
Sanjay Rai: I think that the long-term vision certainly starts with our governor’s signature industries. And those are, again, if you didn’t hear, life sciences. Within life sciences, certainly the computational part, a bit more focus. Aerospace…we already have great strength. IT, certainly, but within IT, quantum computing, we are in the center of the world in quantum computing right here. And cybersecurity, those are the areas that we are going to put our mind and thoughts into. But just saying that we are interested in quantum computing does nothing. What does it mean? So first of all, education and training. If a student is going to middle school, what are we teaching in middle school that relates to quantum computing? As you know, quantum computing, physics, mathematics, and computer science are all vital. How do we start early introducing those things from middle school? Then again, education and training are important. Whether it’s AI or quantum computing, a lot of people who are already in these fields, how do you upskill them? Getting our institutions, community colleges, and others involved in this upskilling area. Then, if our desire is to lead the nation, lead the world in these areas, we have bold ambitions and very high expectations from us. So are we creating knowledge in these areas, whether it’s quantum or whether it’s life sciences? We won the human genome sequencing that has changed everything in life sciences. So in many ways, we are alive because of that. The short amount of time it took us to get the COVID vaccine has something to do with genome sequencing. So what is the next thing that we want to lead in? Those four areas are in our vision, throughout all of government, all of the state approach, and from workforce training to creating homegrown talent to also creating new knowledge, new ideas that lead the nation and the world in those areas.
READ: Maryland Lt. Gov. Aruna Miller talks AI vision for state at UPenn (October 8, 2024)
Michael Hoffmeyer: That’s exciting. So we heard quite a bit about this from Lieutenant Governor Miller and her address earlier. But what gives you optimism about Maryland’s position in the national innovation landscape?
Sanjay Rai: So this morning, I spent a couple of hours at Baltimore City Community College. And all community colleges got together. They get together every year for their STEM research conference. These are community college students, low income students, often first-generation college students. And they were presenting their STEM research that they have done under the mentorship of their faculty at community colleges. And their research spanned from carbon nanotube to environmental science, physics, some on AI, very direct AI improvements. That gave me hope. I was very happy driving here. If we are able to provide those opportunities across the state, certainly Maryland or any other state cannot succeed if we have not provided opportunity to every resident of the state. Inclusion is at the center of everything that we do. And economically and otherwise, without being inclusive, without having an equitable opportunity for everyone, no state can win. So we are highly optimistic because the governor has said that this is Maryland’s decade. When I was at Baltimore City Community College this morning, I left the parking lot thinking the governor is right. This is our decade. We are going to win.
Michael Hoffmeyer: I love it. Well, we’ll close out with this. What advice would you offer a student entrepreneur or an early stage founder that’s just getting started?
Sanjay Rai: Well, just like what my boss, the lieutenant governor, said earlier…often every idea doesn’t succeed the first time. You don’t hear “yes” the first time. You often hear “no.” But keep working at it. Have perseverance. Your idea is great, especially if you are a student. I met students and researchers this morning, and many of them were so wonderful. I mean, one project was a blanket that works completely with solar power to reduce the risks of hypothermia. This stuff works. I told him, go and apply for a patent tomorrow. Maybe we can connect them to some patent lawyer who does things on some other kind of agreement. But keep working at it. The fact that you have an idea, the fact that you are thinking about it, the fact that you are talking about it, you are almost there. Your success is just around the corner. Keep that in mind. Keep working hard.