jbrehm2, June 20, 2012 | View original publication
NSF innovation programs info
"NSF has always been instrumental in creating programs around innovation," Karlene A. Hoo told UNL faculty and staff at a June 20 presentation outlining the National Science Foundation's innovation programs.
Hoo is program director for the Partnerships for Innovation: Accelerating Innovation Research (AIR) program, part of NSF's Division of Industrial Innovation and Partnerships (IIP) of the Directorate for Engineering. She explained NSF's innovation programs designed to move research discoveries from the lab to the marketplace at a public presentation that kicked off her visit to UNL.
The Office of Research and Economic Development and NUtech Ventures hosted Hoo’s presentation and UNL visit.
The IIP division "is where the rubber meets the road" in helping to move research discoveries "from the academic side of the house to the small business side."
Hoo outlined IIP programs that contribute to the goal of innovation. These include: Partnerships for Innovation: Building Innovation Capacity; Partnerships for Innovation: Accelerating Innovation Research; Innovation Corps; Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Technology Transfer Research; Grant Opportunities for Academic Liaison with Industry; and Industry/University Cooperative Research Centers.
Hoo is a professor of chemical engineering at Texas Tech University and the co-director of the Texas Tech Process Control and Optimization Consortium. She also has served as an associate dean of research in the Whitacre College of Engineering, associate vice president for research and acting vice president for research, all at Texas Tech.
Before joining the university, she worked for ExxonMobil and DuPont. Her expertise is in the areas of system identification, dynamic modeling and process design, process control and automation, optimization and multivariate statistics. Hoo has a bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Notre Dame, all in chemical engineering.
