Leir Endowed Chair of Entrepreneurship
Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship
New Jersey Institute of Technology
I am an electrical engineer driven to entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship in the mid-1980’s. At the New Jersey Institute of Technology, I hold the Leir Endowed Chair for Entrepreneurship and the title of NJIT Master Teacher. My research interests lie in entrepreneurship pedagogy, technology-driven business incubation, and mobile healthcare. I lead the Tech Venture Support Program in which students help regional deep tech startups raise funding, and NJIT's participation in the Princeton Review of Entrepreneurship Education Programs in the United States. I have taught every NJIT course in entrepreneurship at least once, and I mentor many of our student- and faculty-led ventures. I also practice what I preach, being a serial entrepreneur and currently the founding partner of an m-health company that serves the emergency response community and is the only small business in New Jersey recognized by NIH for success in the commercialization of translational research.
I received a Ph.D in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University at Buffalo, NY, with a concentration in biomimetic machine vision and AI. My work has yielded journal and conference publications and book chapters, four patents, the NASA Space Act award, and two Small Business of the Year Nominations from the US Department of Defense. I work with an awesome team of Ph.D students in Business Data Science at the Martin Tuchman School of Management, I am National NSF I-Corps Instructor, Associate Editor of the IEEE Journal of Translational Engineering in Health and Medicine, Associate Editor of the International Journal of Mobile Network Design and Innovation, member of the AACSB Entrepreneurship and Innovation Steering Committee, Senior Member IEEE, and served on the board of the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship and as Director of the Academy of the International Council for Small Business.
When I am not in publish-or-perish mode, I rebuild antique single-ended vacuum tube amps, jam on vintage Moog synthesizers, and try to keep roadworthy a 5.0 Mustang ragtop, all which are older than most NJIT students and faculty.
My mission is to present to students the many resources available to the deep-tech STEM entrepreneur and intrapreneur working on challenges with societal significance. This includes teaching them how to navigate through these options, and the protocols associated with each. I promote three values: