John Hardin (CHAIR)

John Hardin is the Executive Director of the Office of Science, Technology & Innovation. He was appointed acting director in 2008 and executive director in 2009.  From 2003 to 2008, he served as the office’s Deputy Director and Chief Policy Analyst.

In his current role he conducts strategic planning and makes recommendations for technology-based economic development, implements technology-related economic development policy and resource allocations, supervises the staff of the N.C. Board of Science, Technology & Innovation, directs and oversees the administration of grant programs to support technology development and commercialization, and oversees strategic initiatives.

From 1998 to 2003, he served as Assistant Vice President for Research and Sponsored Programs in the UNC General Administration. From 1998 to 2005, he held an Adjunct Assistant Professor position in the Dept. of Political Science at UNC-Chapel Hill. He currently holds an Adjunct Assistant Professor position in the Dept. of Public Policy at UNC-Chapel Hill, where he teaches courses on American politics, public policy, and policy analysis. 

A native of Tulsa, Okla., he holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in political science from UNC-Chapel Hill, and a B.A. in economics from Baylor University.

Maryann Feldman

Maryann P. Feldman is the Heninger Distinguished Professor in the Department of Public Policy at the University of North Carolina, an Adjunct Professor of Finance at Kenan-Flagler Business School and a Research Director at UNC Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise.  Her research and teaching interests focus on the areas of innovation, the commercialization of academic research and the factors that promote technological change and economic growth. Dr. Feldman is an editor of the journal, Research Policy.

Dr. Feldman was the winner of the 2013 Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research for her contributions to the study of the geography of innovation and the role of entrepreneurial activity in the formation of regional industry clusters. Her dissertation, Geography of Innovation, examined the spatial distribution of industrial innovation and provided an empirical model of the factors and resources that affected the production of new product innovation. This publication is noted to be the first time that the term “geography” was used to describe spatial phenomenon and is now an accepted lexicon. Currently, the geography of innovation is a subject area under the strategy division of the Academy of Management.

From 2014-2017, Dr. Feldman held a joint appointment at the National Science Foundation as the Science of Science and Innovation Policy (SciSIP) Program Director and chaired an inter-agency working group on Science Policy.

Elizabeth Wayne

Elizabeth Wayne is an Assistant Professor in Biomedical Engineering and Chemical Engineering. Professor Wayne received her B.A. in Physics from the University of Pennsylvania and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Biomedical Engineering from Cornell University. She was subsequently a postdoctoral fellow in the NCI T32 Cancer Nanotechnology Training Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Eshelman School of Pharmacy working under the supervision of Professor Alexander Kabanov. where she developed adipose tissue engineered models. Her lab at CMU focuses on using macrophages as tools for diagnostic evaluation and drug delivery carriers in cancer and regenerative medicine. Her advocacy has been featured in Nature Medicine and Nature Careers and she is a 2017 TED Fellow.

Jamie Vernon

Jamie Vernon is executive director and CEO at Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society and publisher of American Scientist magazine. From 2014 to 2017, he served as Sigma Xi's director of science communications and publications and editor-in-chief of American Scientist. He was also Sigma Xi's co-director of operations from 2014 to 2015. Earlier, Jamie spent more than a decade conducting cell and molecular biology discovery research as a student and research fellow developing genetic engineering tools, designing and analyzing HIV-neutralizing antibodies for vaccine production, and studying the effects of gene duplication on vertebrate evolution and development. An award-winning science educator, he started communicating science to non-academic audiences in 2004 as a public speaker and independent blogger. While pursuing a career in biotechnology, he regularly contributed articles to The Intersection, a Discover magazine blog about science and policy. He changed his career emphasis from research to science policy and communications by serving as an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science & Technology Policy Fellow and subsequently as an Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) Fellow at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). His primary role at DOE was to improve the measurement and communication of the economic impacts of the Department’s $2.7 billion annual investment in clean and efficient energy technologies. In 2011, he helped launch the DOE's National Clean Energy Business Plan Competition. He was co-chair of digital media, from 2012 to 2013, for an interagency climate communications working group within the White House’s U.S. Global Change Research Program. In 2014, he co-founded Potential Energy DC, an energy business startup accelerator, based in Washington, DC. Jamie holds a B.S in Zoology from North Carolina State University, an M.S. in Biotechnology from East Carolina University, and Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin.