Profile

Jeff is a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and holds the Hogg Family Director of Engineering Management and Entrepreneurship endowed chair at Duke University. His career has spanned leadership positions in both industry and academia with a focus on innovation management and materials science. His current appointment includes directing the newly formed Institute for Enterprise Engineering which provides applied, high-impact, industry-focused educational programs to meet the rapidly evolving needs of technology-based organizations. The Institute programs leverage state-of-the-art computational technologies (e.g., blockchain, AI, data analytics, etc.) and engineering management concepts to enhance organizational performance and develop solutions to organizational and societal challenges. It combines engineering and business concepts to bring real-world problems and case studies into the classroom, enhancing graduates’ value to industry and enabling career success.

Jeff’s technical work involves the development and processing of new materials to improve device performance with an emphasis on carbon and related materials, which he has studied for over 30 years. This includes diamond, silicon carbide, carbon nanotubes, graphene and graphenated carbon nanotubes, in applications ranging from electrochemical processes for energy conversion/storage to microelectronic devices. Jeff is widely published in peer reviewed journals and is a co-inventor on 15 patents. He has been a short course instructor for several professional societies and companies, and has organized numerous conferences.  He served as a member of a Presidential Science Advisor’s committee for the assessment of diamond technology in Japan and received the National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award.

Previous to his current appointment, Jeff served as the Joseph F. Toot Professor of Engineering at Case Western Reserve University and prior to that, Vice President of R&D for Kobe Steel USA Inc. where he led their Electronic Materials Center. He has testified as an expert witness in patent litigation, conducted due diligence for venture capital firms, and served on the advisory boards of several start-up ventures. He teaches Innovation Management and his paper entitled “Managing the Ties Between Central R&D and Business Units,” received the 2004 Industrial Research Institute’s Maurice Holland Award.  Jeff received his BSE and MSE degrees from Johns Hopkins University, and a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Virginia. He also holds an MBA from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University.