Honoree Birendra “Ben” Pramanik M.S. ’73 Ph.D. ’77

Honoree Pramanik established the Ajay Kumar and Margaret Logan Bose Memorial Scholarship Award in 2015 to support graduate-level research and to honor his colleague and mentor, who served on the Stevens faculty from 1959 to 2007. (Bose himself was honored with an award presented to his family at the inaugural awards dinner in 2021.)

Having escaped the civil war in Bangladesh (then East Pakistan), Pramanik enrolled as a graduate student at Stevens under Bose’s mentorship. The two forged a deep personal and professional relationship, collaborating on 14 papers together between 1970 and 1977.

“Because of that strong faculty-student relationship,” said Wong, “Ben became a respected research leader and executive in the pharmaceutical industry.”

Pramanik retired as a senior fellow from Merck, having supervised nearly 30 research labs. He led the development of such medications as Keytruda and Interferon for cancer treatment and popular allergy drug Claritin, and wrote or co-wrote 165 research articles. 

A long-time supporter of the chemistry and chemical biology department, Pramanik recently doubled funding for the Bose award, enabling the department to support even more student research each year. Since its establishment, the Bose award has supported 10 Ph.D. and Master’s students in total. The inaugural recipient of the scholarship, Rahul Khade, is now a lecturer in chemistry at Stevens. 

“Ben’s passion for student success honors his former mentor’s legacy and is an example of stewardship worthy to be recognized and remembered,” said Wong. “His investment in supporting the chemists and chemical biologists of the future elevates the student’s graduate experience and inspires them both to achieve career success and to ultimately give back. This caring and giving attitude exemplified by Ben serves as an inspiration for our current and future faculty to be emulated.”