Joseph B. Hornett
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Senior Vice President, Treasurer, and Chief Operating Officer
Purdue Research Foundation, Inc.
Since 2001, Joseph Hornett has served as Senior Vice President, Treasurer, and Chief Operating Officer of the Purdue Research Foundation, located in West Lafayette, Indiana. In this role, he is responsible for managing the affairs of this nearly $600 million 501(c)3 charitable organization that was founded in 1930 to exclusively serve the interests of Purdue University. Hornett is charged with providing strategic direction and leadership in five mission-critical areas: endowment management, trust administration, real estate operations, technology commercialization, and economic development initiatives.
Under Hornett’s leadership, the foundation has seen annual patent applications, invention disclosures, and royalty income from its technology commercialization efforts increase to record levels. Citing Purdue as a model, a recent report commissioned by the State of Connecticut and prepared by Innovation Associates, titled “Accelerating Economic Development through University Technology Transfer,� praised Purdue’s technology commercialization program and its business development initiatives.
Hornett’s leadership resulted in the national recognition of Purdue Research Park as the country’s top technology transfer program in 2005, and the nation’s top university research park in 2004. Hornett has also worked to gain Indiana’s first certified technology park designation and, in cooperation with local and state government officials, to win a nationwide competition to recruit Butler International Inc.’s engineering design center. The company, which provides design work for Sikorsky Aircraft Corp., located its newest center in the research park in 2004 and employs 200 engineering professionals.
Hornett has solidified Purdue’s reputation in the statewide economic development arena through the expansion of the foundation’s flagship business incubator in West Lafayette as well as the expansion of business development programs to Merrillville, Indianapolis, and New Albany. Opened in 2005, Purdue Technology Center of Northwest Indiana is a first-of-its-kind satellite incubator operated under the auspices of the foundation and seeded with federal appropriations secured by U.S. Rep. Pete Visclosky. Slated to open in 2008, the Purdue Technology Center of New Albany will offer business acceleration services to entrepreneurs in southern Indiana.
In 2005, Hornett was among the IBJ’s Power Players in life sciences and technology and, as Purdue’s representative, he traveled with a state delegation on a trade mission to Asia. He holds an MBA from Butler University and a BBA from the University of Notre Dame.
As an advocate of lifelong learning, he holds a number of professional certifications, including the following: certified management accountant, certified financial manager, certified fraud examiner, and certified treasury professional. In 1997, Hornett was nationally recognized as “Financial Executive of the Year� by the Institute of Management Accountants. In 2004 he was named an “AFP 300 Laureate� by the Association of Financial Professionals. He is a graduate of GE’s esteemed financial management program and the Williams College executive development program.
Hornett is active in a variety of civic, professional, and economic development organizations, and is a board member of Lafayette Bank & Trust, MainGate, the Lafayette-West Lafayette Economic Development Corporation, the Greater Lafayette Development Corporation, the Indiana Future Fund I, ARCH Development Partners, Centerfield Capital Partners, EDF Ventures, the Indiana Center for Applied Protein Sciences, and the Sagamore Council-Boy Scouts of America.
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