JHU West Coast Technology Event

Ronald J. Daniels, President, Johns Hopkins University

Ronald J. Daniels is the 14^th president of Johns Hopkins University, America’s first research university. In 2015, Johns Hopkins Institutions had revenues of $10.2 billion, an endowment of $3.4 billion, and more than 55,000 employees worldwide. For 35 years, Johns Hopkins has stood as the largest university recipient of competitively allocated federal research funds.  

Since taking office in 2009, Daniels has focused his leadership on three overarching themes – enhanced interdisciplinary collaboration, individual excellence, and community engagement. These themes are the backbone of the university’s strategic vision through 2020, and underscore the priorities of Johns Hopkins’ largest-ever fundraising campaign, a $5 billion effort.

During Daniels’ tenure, the university has launched of a series of multi-disciplinary initiatives aimed at addressing some of society’s most vexing issues, bolstered the efforts of faculty, staff and students to translate discoveries into novel technologies, invested heavily in student access, and extended its rich community partnerships.

A law and economics scholar, Daniels is author or editor of seven books and dozens of scholarly articles. Before coming to Johns Hopkins, he was provost and professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania and dean and James M. Tory Professor of Law of the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto.  

Christy Wyskiel, Senior Advisor to the President, Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures

Christy Wyskiel is currently serving as an Advisor to the President of Johns Hopkins University on matters of innovation, commercialization, and entrepreneurship.

Christy is a seasoned entrepreneur and investor with 19 years of experience primarily focused on the life sciences and healthcare industries. Prior to her career as an entrepreneur, Christy was a Managing Director at Maverick Capital, a long-short equity hedge fund with over $12 billion under management, where she had a long track record of successful healthcare investing in both public and private companies. Prior to that, she was a healthcare and medical technology stock analyst at T. Rowe Price.

Since 2010, Christy has co-founded two Baltimore based startups and has served as a formal and informal advisor to many others. In 2013, GrayBug, a Johns Hopkins University ophthalmology startup which Christy co-founded, won a statewide business plan competition with over 60 life sciences company applicants.

Christy graduated from Williams College (BA, Economics and German) and the Stern School of Business at New York University (MBA, Accounting and Finance). Christy currently serves as vice chairman for the board of Teach for America – Baltimore and co-chairs Baltimore’s Next Generation Investing Event, an event she co-founded which has raised over $300,000 for three K-8 education initiatives in Baltimore City. She was also appointed by Gov. Martin O’Malley to the board of the Maryland State Retirement Plan (MSRP), which oversees $3 billion in defined contribution assets of state employees.

T.E. “Ed” Schlesinger, Benjamin T. Rome Dean, Johns Hopkins University, Whiting School of Engineering

Ed Schlesinger was appointed as the Benjamin T. Rome Dean at Johns Hopkins University’s Whiting School of Engineering in 2014 where he also is a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

At Johns Hopkins, Schlesinger has launched numerous initiatives focussed on enhancing the student experience and has built educational, research, and outreach partnerships aimed at furthering the impact of the work of Whiting School of Engineering faculty, students, and staff. He has emphasized the importance of translation in engineering and has advanced the school’s partnership with Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures as well as industrial partners.

Specific initiatives include the creation of the cross-divisional Department of Environmental Health and Engineering, a partnership between the Whiting School and JHU’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, the launch of the Malone Center for Engineering in Healthcare, a partnership with the School of Medicine, deepening the partnership with the the Applied Physics Laboratory, and helping lead an engineering education partnership between a Baltimore City preK – 8 school and JHU. 

Prior to joining Johns Hopkins, Schlesinger was the David Edward Schramm Memorial Professor and head of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.

His research has been in the area of semiconductor materials, structures and devices and the development of data storage systems and reconfigurable electronics. He has published over 250 articles and conference proceedings, holds 13 patents and is a Fellow of the IEEE and the SPIE.

Schlesinger earned a BSc in physics at the University of Toronto and earned his MS and PhD in applied physics at the California Institute of Technology.