Kimberly Mayer, PhD, MBA, joined the University of Virginia as Associate Vice President for Research Development in July 2022. She leads the UVA team that assists faculty in creating competitive approaches and proposals for large and complex funding opportunities. Previously, Kim held a similar role as Associate Vice President for Research at the University of Texas at Arlington. She has served as inaugural Executive Director and launched two university-level Centers, UTA’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Economic Innovation and Caltech’s Donna and Benjamin M. Rosen Bioengineering Center. At Caltech, she also launched the NIH Biotechnology Leadership Pre-doctoral T32 Training Grant Program. Prior to joining Caltech, Kim led the Statewide Technology Commercialization team at the North Carolina Small Business and Technology Development Center where she and her team directly contributed to economic impacts with over 125 companies, including 258 SBIR/STTR awards totaling nearly $102 million, 24 business starts, 38 investments and over 140 new jobs. Kim also spent four years, from month one through to acquisition, as a senior scientist with a successful agricultural biotechnology startup company in NC’s Research Triangle Park. She earned her bachelor’s degree in biology, summa cum laude with honors, at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Kim earned a doctorate in biochemistry as an NSF Fellow at Purdue and an MBA as a Business of Biotechnology Fellow at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. She conducted postdoctoral research as a Goldhaber Fellow at Brookhaven National Lab and as an NIH F32 postdoctoral fellow in a lab at Caltech that would later win the Nobel Prize in 2018 for Frances Arnold in directed evolution.