Wayne Johnson has joined Caltech as assistant vice president for Institute corporate relations, effective October 3. In his role at the helm of the newly created Office of Institute Corporate Relations, Johnson will be responsible for exploring, establishing, and extending strategic corporate partnerships for Caltech. In close collaboration with senior Institute leaders, he will develop and foster strategies to increase corporate awareness of, interest in, and financial support for Caltech's transformative research and educational priorities and initiatives. As part of this effort, Johnson and his team will identify and leverage federal research-funding options via new models for engagement with the private sector.
"Consistent with its mission, Caltech wishes to serve society by encouraging businesses to transform the results of our breakthrough research into products and services that become available in the marketplace and create economic opportunities," says Johnson. "Within this context, Caltech endeavors to be a compelling partner to corporations by offering unique research capabilities and world-class researchers. The Caltech faculty is always eager to tackle the most difficult scientific and technological challenges in bioengineering, space, energy, engineering sciences, and information technology. Our role is to facilitate an environment that is conducive to closer interactions between Caltech researchers and corporate partners."
"Corporate partnerships are, and will be, increasingly indispensable in addressing many critical global scientific problems," says Mory Gharib, Caltech vice provost. "Wayne comes to us with an extraordinary set of skills and abundant experience in navigating corporate and academic interfaces related to intellectual property rights, innovation policy, technology commercialization and competitiveness issues. I look forward to working with him on developing pioneering, socially responsible new models for collaborative research and education."
Mr. Johnson is a nationally renowned expert in domestic and international innovation ecosystems and experienced at creating complex partnerships between government, academia, industry, and nongovernmental organizations. Before joining Caltech, Johnson served as an independent consultant on strategic corporate initiatives for clients such as the National Science Foundation, the University of Texas at El Paso, the Government University Industry Research Roundtable, and the Intuit Corporation. From 2001 to 2009, Johnson was vice president of university relations worldwide for Hewlett-Packard Company; and from 2000 to 2001, he was manager of university relations for Microsoft Research. Prior to that, Johnson contributed in a number of management and operations roles at Raytheon Company and served as an adjunct professor of management at Boston University from 1977 to 1999.
Johnson received his BA from Colgate University and an MBA from Boston College's Carroll School of Management. He is a board member of the Alliance for Science and Technology Research in America, the Wentworth Institute of Technology Board of Trustees, the National Leadership Council for the national initiative Liberal Education and America's Promise, and the Kauffman Foundation iBridgeSM Network Strategic Advisory Board.