Joseph B. Hornett
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Senior Vice President, Treasurer, and Chief Operating Officer for Purdue Research Foundation Inc.
Since 2002, 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 $900 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 also has 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. In Merrillville, the Purdue Technology Center of Northwest Indiana, which opened in 2005, 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. In New Albany, the foundation has begun construction on the Purdue Technology Center of Southeast Indiana, which will offer business acceleration services to entrepreneurs in southern Indiana beginning in fall 2008. In Indianapolis, plans are underway for Purdue Accelerator Park, an Indianapolis-based technology park created by the foundation in partnership with a South Bend-based national real estate development company. Located along the I-70 corridor and near the midfield terminal of the Indianapolis International Airport, Purdue’s 78-acre site is the centerpiece of the latest 400-acre phase of Holladay Properties Inc.’s AmeriPlex-Indianapolis, a nearly 1,500-acre development. It is anticipated that the park will accommodate up to 75 businesses and create 1,500 jobs with an average annual salary of $54,000.
In 2005, Hornett was among the IBJ’s Power Players in life sciences and technology and, as Purdue’s representative, 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 business 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 Corp., 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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