June 7, 2005
Researcher, distinguished prof to head entrepreneurship center
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WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Jerry M. Woodall, a Purdue University distinguished professor who spent 31 years as a researcher in IBM labs and has started three companies, today (Tuesday, June 7) was named director of the Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship in Discovery Park.
"My job will be to take our faculty and students' research and ideas and turn them into business plans and then hopefully move them along to the Purdue Research Park and the venture capitalists," Woodall said. "I am keen on engaging students – undergraduates and graduates – in learning about entrepreneurism."
Woodall also will be in charge of industrial collaborations.
"Large companies can no longer do all the research they need to compete in the global economy, so universities need to take on corporate-sponsored research," Woodall said. "This will bring resources to the university and expose students to real research to complement their classroom work and prepare them for careers in industry, academe or as entrepreneurs."
Woodall said the Krannert School of Management and its dean Richard A. Cosier, who has led the first four start-up years of the entrepreneurship center, were vital in extending the initial success of the center. Cosier, Leeds Professor of Management, said entrepreneurship remained high on the school's agenda.
"The world and Purdue are becoming more and more entrepreneurial," Cosier said. "Moving forward, the Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship will continue to provide the Krannert School a proving ground for business and management research – areas that underpin entrepreneurship."
Charles O. Rutledge, Discovery Park executive director, said Woodall brings a range of skills and experience to the entrepreneurship center directorship.
"Jerry Woodall is a premier researcher in micro-electronics and nanotechnology," Rutledge said. "He's spent more than a quarter century with one of the world's leading technology companies, and he has the undaunted mindset and the drive of an entrepreneur."
Woodall's current entrepreneurial venture is Light Spin Technologies, a start-up company based at Yale University, which is bringing to market advanced high-speed electronic and high-performance light-emitting and detecting semiconductor devices and circuits.
Woodall, who received a National Medal of Technology from George W. Bush in 2001, earned his undergraduate degree in 1960 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his doctorate from Cornell University in 1982. His primary areas of interest are microelectronics and nanotechnology.
Woodall joined IBM Research in 1962. He became an IBM Fellow in 1985 and held that post until joining the Purdue faculty in 1993. He left Purdue in 1998 to join the faculty at Yale and returned to Purdue this year.
He has 334 publications and has been issued 67 U.S. patents. He has received 11 major national awards from six organizations and was awarded nine NASA Certificates of Recognition and four Outstanding Innovation awards from IBM.
Woodall is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He was named a fellow of four societies: the American Vacuum Society, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Electrochemical Society, and American Physical Society.
Writer: Mike Lillich, (765) 494-2077, mlillich@purdue.edu
Sources: Jerry Woodall, (765) 494-3479, woodall@purdue.edu
Richard A. Cosier, (765) 494-4366, rcosier@purdue.edu
Charles R. Rutledge, (765) 494-7766, chipr@purddue.edu
Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu
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