This episode features Michael Johnson, President of NJII, and John Pelesko, Provost of NJIT, sharing their unconventional paths into leadership. They highlight NJIT’s innovation culture, NJII’s venture studio building startups from university IP, $180M+ in research funding, entrepreneurship programs, state collaborations, and a vision for flexible, student-centered higher education.
Michael Johnson: Thank you for having me. Michael Johnson, the president of the New Jersey Innovation Institute.
Jim Barrood: Great, John. So
John Pelesko: Good morning, Jim. John Pelesko. I'm Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Great. Alright. Let's circle back to you, Michael. How did you get here?
I know some of your past, it's pretty extraordinary, but I want you to. Tell us let's take it from high school or college and talk to us about your path.
Michael Johnson: Sure. High school loved high school, loved playing football in high school and went to college to go to school, but also wanted to play football in college.
And I, I did that. During my college work I did pre-med bio, so science was always something I was super passionate about. Always loved science. My dad was an eighth grade science teacher, always super passionate about that. Building rockets, blowing things up. It's always been like a pleasure of mine.
And coming out of undergrad though, I had no idea what I wanted to do. It's like 2011, so job market is terrible. Looking at jobs, didn't quite know where I was going to go, and I was like, maybe I'll be a teacher like my dad. But I had applied for all these jobs, like middle of financial crisis and no one got back to me.
The one job I got was with nasa, the coolest job I could have applied for. And coolest job I could have got. I got lucky and got a job with NASA for the summer between undergraduate and whatever was afterwards, and I learned through that. I loved science. I want to be a scientist and decided to do a PhD.
Never met a scientist before, so I didn't even know it was a career you could even do. But very natural fit, made sense in retrospect. Went and did a PhD at Rutgers. During my PhD work, I met another PhD student who invented a super cool technology for imaging tissues like mouse brains and biopsies.
Started working with him on that during our PhD and we ultimately spun a company out of Rutgers with his intellectual property. It was focused on imaging tissues for pharma companies. And we built that up from two guys in a closet at Rutgers to about 50 people doing projects for all 20 of the top 20 pharma companies in the world, helping them understand if their drugs are safe or they efficacious, where do they go, what do they do?
And we sold that back in 21 to a public trade Swedish company called Bico. I stayed there for about. Two and a half years as chief Commercial Officer for a few of our sister companies in in the life sciences space. And then after doing that and running a company that you no longer own anymore was no longer for me.
I decided I want to do something else. And the day I said, all right, let's start looking for something. NJ it reached out and said, Hey, there's this president role as NJI. Are you aware of it? And interestingly, like two years prior, I had bought a company that was in ji's incubator on campus at NGIT called Rell.
And when I was there I said, this place is cool. I've never heard of it. I'd love to, learn more and work with these guys one day. So I was like, yeah, I know exactly what you guys do. And for me, I have this passion for getting intellectual property out of universities, taking things out of lab, turn into real products and services.
And that's a core part of the mission at NJII. So I've been there for about two years now and really enjoy being associated with higher ed, helping John and the team at NJIT try and get IP out and also partnering with government organizations and companies to try and foster innovation in New Jersey.
So that's how I got there. Rather circuitous path though.
Jim Barrood: Oh, that's a really illuminating path and to know that you had actually done the work as an entrepreneur, the university. And all the intricacies. It makes you really well soothed for what you're doing now.
Really delighted with your leadership so far. John, talk to us about your journey. Sure.
John Pelesko: I think the theme might be circuitous paths, because I like Michael, I also. Took somewhat of a circuitous path to get ultimately where I am. It's funny, he mentioned blowing things up as a kid.
I also like blowing things up as a kid. Michael and I think that's what I early on discovered my passion for science and such. In terms of circuitous path my, my undergraduate years, I did not take a linear path through, through my undergraduate years. Changed majors. I dropped out for a while, went to work in construction for a bit, and then ultimately ended up discovering that I really loved mathematics, right?
I loved science but the thing I was most drawn to was mathematics and ultimately applied mathematics. So I earned my PhD. And I decided I wanted to be an academic and stay in academia. Loved teaching, loved research, just that's what I was absolutely passionate about. Went to Caltech as a postdoc, but a few years there as a postdoc.
My first faculty position was at Georgia Tech, so I was down there in Atlanta for a while. And then I spent 21 years at the University of Delaware, and so I was a faculty member. And then I got drawn into academic administration. I ended up as department chair and then associate dean, and then ultimately dean of the college arts and sciences at ud.
And as I went through that, I had to grapple with getting further and further away from. Teaching and research, you just don't have time to do it. And ultimately I realized that the thing that I really love. Yes, I love science. Absolutely love mathematics. But the thing that I love more than anything is learning new stuff.
Right? That's the thing I just get very excited about. And I found being an administrator, I get the chance to do that, right? Running a College of Arts and Sciences, I got to learn about absolutely everything. And then two years ago, I had the opportunity to come to NGIT and serve as Provost and work in just this incredibly amazing, innovative institution.
And learn a whole new set of things. And getting back to that point about it being a bit circuitous is actually circular because I did my PhD at NJIT, so 27, 27 years later came back to NGIT and here I am as provost.
Jim Barrood: Wow. What a path. What a path. Michael, tell us about innovation at NJIT and NJII.
Clearly you've. It made an impact in the past couple years, but give us an overview, particularly for those who aren't aware of what's going on.
Michael Johnson: Innovation is a broad term and there's so many things that you can do to try and spur innovation. And for us as NJII, we did a rather introspective approach the last two years and said, what can we do the best?
Where's an area that we can have a lot of meaningful impact? 'cause of course we can teach and we can do mentoring, and we can do events. And there's all these different things that you can do, transfer innovation, and they're all important in different ways because you think of a ecosystem, the most important part of ecosystem for startups of innovation.
Or the people who actually do these things. The guys or girls who are willing to work 80, a hundred hours a week for years on end with no guarantee of success. Those are your most important people. So there's a big piece of this that's attracting those and having events to do that. Funding is next.
You need to actually have money to make these things happen. As far as startups and companies, we also need the ideas though, and that's why it's so important for us to be affiliated with and owned by NJIT because where most startups come from is academia. It's some guy or girl in a lab for a decade just pound their head against the wall and all of a sudden they come up with something and that thing has to get out of there.
And that person's not well equipped usually to do that, nor do they want to. And that's where we fill in and try and address that gap is get those ideas out of the lab and bring them actually into the real world. But we found as NJI, where we're best suited to do that is actually building companies to get these things to market.
We don't have a lot of founders in New Jersey compared to, Boston or San Diego that are in a garage and just need money or just need a space or just need a court partner. We have a lot of ideas that are stuck and so what we said is why don't we go ahead and intentionally build companies de novo.
Let's take a great idea. We have lots of great court partners in New Jersey. Let's partner with them to build the company. Let's go find a CEO, let's go find a CTO and actually launch a company together from scratch. And we had done that before. I came along with a company called Biocentric, where NGIT had small scale cell and gene therapy manufacturing industry wanted it.
We had faculty where the expertise. And so we built a company around that. We'd all the proper pieces together. We just put them together and we sold that company for $73 million. So when I came on board, my first thought was, why don't we just do that again and intentionally do this? And so we launched the NJI Venture Studio and the whole idea is to do it again and again.
We partnered with the N-J-E-D-A and we put together $12 million to over the next four to five years. Build 10 companies, we put a million dollars into each company and try and build them from the ground up. So that's probably our biggest initiative and biggest effort spur innovation as NJI. And that helps us get stuff out of the university and turn into companies, which is our goal, and hopefully get it to people and raise more funds and keep doing that.
So that's our biggest initiative, but we're doing all the other stuff as well. Networking and events and incubator space. But that's our primary mission right now.
Jim Barrood: Sounds good. All right, so give us the bigger picture. John, tell us about all the other things related or not related to NJII that are going on at the school.
John Pelesko: Yeah I think Michael captured it perfectly and why NJII and NJIT fit together so well. When he talked about the fact that most innovation comes from academia and most innovation comes from a faculty member that's been, as he says, toiling away in a lab for 20 years, has some brilliant idea.
And when you look at NJIT, innovation is built into everything that we do. Certainly the faculty research enterprise, every one of them is. Passionate and excited about whatever their particular discipline is, whatever their particular field is, and they are doing that. They're spending day in and day out in their laboratory or their office, whatever, however, they, they end up working and they're innovating in all of these incredible ways.
The connection to NJI lets us turn that into applications, to real world problems. The only thing that I would note though, when you, because you ask about the bigger picture, is I think NJIT is unique in the sense that it's not only through research that we're renovated, we try and innovate through every aspect of our mission.
And I'll emphasize education. Education. We're always trying to think about how do we better train the next generation of students? And I'll just point to two quick examples. I think if you come visit, visit campus, you need to make sure that you visit our makerspace. It's an absolutely incredible facility.
I can't even describe how big it is. I think, Michael could probably give you a good description as well, but that's a place where you get faculty coming together with students coming together. They're able to do everything from using a wood shop to 3D printing, to any kind of machining that you can imagine.
Incredible innovation taking place there. And it's tied to the educational enterprise of the institution. The other just thing I'll note is, everybody's talking about artificial intelligence. Everybody's talking about the impact that it's having, and you see a lot of institutions of higher education reacting and saying, keep it away.
We it can be used for cheating. It's a bad thing. We don't want it at NGIT. We've embraced it, right? And we're asking the question, how do we make our education better? Using AI as a tool and recognizing that it's just something else that we can use to give students a better experience. So to me, across the board in innovation is built into the DNA of GIE Ed t.
Jim Barrood: Yeah, for sure. And what about funding? You folks are one of the leaders in the state, so as far as grants from federal government as far and other institutions or organizations, how much are you guys getting, in general as far as grants for research?
John Pelesko: Yeah, so we do about 180 million in sponsored research each year.
That's a combination of grants from the federal government, from state government, from industry, from other community organizations with of course federal research grants being the biggest being the most, most important contributor. A lot of our funding comes from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, and it's across a wide variety of areas, as a polytechnic certainly engineering.
Right is a huge part of what we do, but also computer science. We're unique in the fact that we have a College of Computing and you see some fantastic research coming out of our Ying w College of Computing and all of our other colleges as well. So it's a, it is a broad spectrum of things with support coming from a variety of places.
Jim Barrood: That's great. And Michael, what about the entrepreneurial programming? I know several of your colleagues I used to run an entrepreneurship center I have high regard for the programs there. Talk to us about how those programs have grown and how you interact with them.
At NJII.
Michael Johnson: Yeah, that's an awesome question. So across NJIT and NJI, we've split our efforts on where we focus on entrepreneurial programs. So for NJI, we're focused on everything post company formation. So this is where we're trying to place startups in space. We're trying to actually build companies from scratch.
So day one and beyond, we're trying to do events. We're bringing entrepreneurs together. We help out with the NJ ADA's Innovation Fellows program. We also run Merck's Digital Science Studios. We're helping them invest in digital science companies, and that program has been incredibly successful. It's in the top 1% of all accelerators in the country as far as success and follow up funding, which has been awesome to run and be part of.
So those are all from company formation and beyond. For NGIT, we have center for Student Entrepreneurship. We have a number of different entrepreneurship programs and curriculum that are tied to students because we want to have our students have. Entrepreneurial pursuits during their undergraduate and graduate education, and there's a whole bunch of different efforts that we have on that, that John can speak more to.
But for us as MJI, we are a non-for-profit, but the way I view it at the end of the day is we're a tax exempt organization. We want to grow, we want to scale roughly, we're around $30 million in revenue as an organization. Coming from various agencies and companies that are out there. But for us, we want to grow and scale.
So we want to look at programs and entrepreneurship where we can actually derive return on investment hosting events and paying for things, as is extremely expensive unless you have sponsors to pay for all those. So for us, we're looking at what programs can we fund that actually spur innovation entrepreneurship, but also can derive an ROI, which is why we're so focused on our Venture Studio initiative.
Jim Barrood: That's great. And I know. The SICs. The collaborations with the EDA, can you talk about those what you're doing in combination with in collaboration with other, in organizations including the local, state, government and other schools?
Michael Johnson: Sure. The SIC program is a brilliant program, right?
Because you need all these pieces for entrepreneurship and for startups to happen. And the whole idea is we put places for people to live and work and funding and all these pieces together in ecosystems. And we were fortunate to have the seventh SIC in the state, which is partnership with the N-J-E-D-A.
And it allows us to build the venture Studio. It allows us to bring resources and have people on site and put all the pieces together to spur innovation. And then amongst all the SICs in the state, some are different levels of maturity, but we're starting to collaborate. For example, if we're starting a startup company, we need a founder.
Perhaps they have one over at Helix. Perhaps they have one at one of the other SICs in the state that we can pull in. Perhaps they have a company that our faculty can help out with NGIT. So we're starting to build those connections. What we don't want. New Jersey has a tendency as, to be very parochial and isolated, even though we're a tiny little state where people don't talk to each other.
So the goal of the SICs and the program is to make sure we are all talking, we are all communicating, we're meeting frequently. So the EDA is setting that up as we speak. And yeah, that program is awesome. I give the Murphy administration a lot of credit for that because it addressed a very unique New Jersey problem of just ecosystems.
Jim Barrood: Yeah. And John, what about collaborations with other universities or grant applications? I think you folks have icorp as well. Can you talk about that a bit?
John Pelesko: Sure. Yeah. And I think what Michael was describing with SICs is complimented perfectly by a lot of the work we do.
In particular I'll point to the NSF art program where we have significant funding from the National Science Foundation and we serve as the convener, bringing together people from industry. From other higher education institutions bringing together people from government around big, challenging problems.
Most, most recently we had a workshop on PFAS. We actually now had two workshops on, on, on PFAS, which, as is a significant societal problem. And bringing together all of these individuals, you start to see the places where you can do things through the, through these sis. Michael can talk more about some of the companies in this area that are going to be coming out of NJII.
But that's a key role, right? We did a similar program around artificial intelligence last year, same type of thing, bringing together industry, other higher education institutions. Particularly those from New Jersey again, to look at what where are the opportunities in artificial intelligence.
And I'm going to put in a little plug here, and you're welcome to join us, Jim. Next year, March 26th, we're going to have our first AI experience day. It's an all day on-campus event. Be everybody, all day, all ai. And we're looking to bring in, again, people from government, people from industry community partners to explore all of the implications of artificial intelligence for higher education and for society and beyond.
Jim Barrood: Oh, that's exciting. Thank, thanks for noting that. Is there anything else you folks want to talk about that we haven't discussed as far as all the great things that you're looking forward to or some of the vision here in GIT relating to innovation?
John Pelesko: Just the one thing I'll mention, I want to expand a little bit on, on something Michael said about the Center for Student Entrepreneurship, which I think is a really tremendous, effort.
And it, the NJII and NJIT complement each other perfectly in this way. That, that center is relatively new. It's about a year or so old now. Their mission is to radically expand access to entrepreneurship and the number of students participating in entrepreneurial type activities across the entire campus.
And they've done a fantastic job. They're growing like crazy. I want to give 'em special credit. They just, we just brought in our first global entrepreneur in residence. That's a program funded by the State of New Jersey and JIT is the only institution in the state that was selected to participate in that program, and so they're already starting to get global reach as well.
Jim Barrood: That's exciting that, that's really a great program that I'm actually aware of. But while we talk about folks, getting more entrepreneurial and interacting with the university, we usually have a just one thing. What's one tip for entrepreneurs or innovators out there to who are looking for, looking to collaborate with NGIT? Michael?
Michael Johnson: My perspective, the first thing is just getting in touch and having a conversation. A lot of people are afraid to just reach out and just, Hey, I have this idea. Who should I talk to? But that's the best way to get acclimated. There's so many programs, there's so many different people and researchers and folks out there that it is becoming part of the ecosystem.
It can be overwhelming, but I would say for us, best spot that we have are when people reach out to us and say, I'm doing X. Can you help me with that? And we say we can't help you, but Judas chef over here can, or this program can, and we point them in the right direction. So it's reaching out, it's trying to connect the ecosystem.
But also joining events. There's plenty of events in New Jersey much more than there used to be, and every one of those events has people that know more than you do. So I'd say getting involved, especially if you're super early on. And then secondarily is finding a mentor. So somebody in the ecosystem or beyond that's done what you're trying to do, connecting with them and learning from them.
Much easier than trying to bash your head into a wall and figure out on your own. Great advice, John.
John Pelesko: I, I think mine in many ways mirrors Michael's. I would say, bring us your problems. Bring real problems. Don't be afraid to reach out, and then also be open to connecting with people that you might not have thought.
Or is the person you're going to connect with, right? You might think, oh, I need to talk to a biologist. But it might be just be a mathematician that solves your problem. 'cause they work in mathematical biology, right? And that's what you find at institutions. A higher education is you don't never know where the really good answer is going to come from, where the really good idea is going to come from.
And that's what really what you're tapping into when you connect to a place like NGIT.
Jim Barrood: Awesome. Now this is a section where we do lightning questions. So let's start with you, Michael. If you weren't in academia, what would you be doing?
Michael Johnson: oh, I just trade crypto all day and hang out in the gym. And I was like that's not good. That sounds cool. So maybe that, no, I, in seriousness, no. Probably for me, if I was in my current role, I'd be running another startup or running another company. I do really enjoy.
Building organizations, running organizations, especially when innovation's involved in getting something from a lab to the marketplace. That's where I'm most excited. So something like that. But I like my job. Yeah, I like where I'm at now.
Jim Barrood: That's the best. What's one myth about academia you'd love to bust?
Michael Johnson: A myth about academia. Oh, man. I think one of the current ones very relevant now is that there's lots of researchers that don't return any investment. When business people look at academia, it's, and I span both worlds, right? So I've been a CEO, I've been an academic. They look at it and say, oh, a guy in his lab, he hasn't done anything.
He published two papers. He is not accomplishing anything. I think it's really difficult for business folks to look at academia. And say what the return on investment is. Because sometimes you don't see it for 10 years, sometimes you don't see it ever, but just once in a while, somebody changes the world. So I think that is a misnomer that we're seeing right now is it is really tough to do that.
You have to put smart people in rooms, give them resources and trust that they're going to accomplish something and they do. But very tough to explain that to folks.
Jim Barrood: Okay. Next question. If you could redesign higher education from scratch, what's one thing you would do differently? I would probably make
Michael Johnson: it easier for students to change majors.
I would make it easier for them to change what they're doing because you come in as an 18-year-old and you have no idea what you're doing, and all of a sudden you're behind the eight ball and then you're in school for much longer. I'd make it a little bit more flexible and also give more training ahead of time to students in high school about picking their career, exposing them to things I didn't even know a scientist was a career going into college, even until I got into grad school.
So I think that exposure for students is critical and that'll allow people to pick careers they actually want to get into versus being trapped into a career that they didn't want to get into, but they're stuck on this trajectory.
Jim Barrood: Great. Okay, one last question. If you had an unlimited innovation grant with no restrictions, what would you do with it?
Michael Johnson: Unlimited. I would go after fusion. Fusion is a thing. Energy, if it's unlimited, you can basically solve any problem you have. For me, that's where like every dollar research should go into is fusion. I don't see any better use of money than that, but we spend way too little on that. So that's where I would go.
Jim Barrood: Okay. Those are good responses. All right, John, next let's see. If you weren't in academia, what would you be doing?
Jim Barrood: So I had the same question for you that Michael did, whether this was ideal or real, right? So if you're going to say ideal would be professional surfer, but I would've never had the talent to actually do that.
More realistic or more realistic answer? Probably something in the ed tech space. I still think I would be somewhere education tangents tangential, no matter. No matter where I ended up,
John Pelesko: I like the surfer option obviously.
Jim Barrood: What's one myth about academia you'd love to bust?
John Pelesko: That academia doesn't change.
The reality is academia is constantly innovating. We're changing all of the time. If you look at the history of American, higher education's changed radically over the last 250 years. Academia is, change is part of who we are. It's not a static thing in any way, shape, or form.
Jim Barrood: Got it.
Okay. And if you could re redesign higher ed from scratch, what's one thing you would do differently?
John Pelesko: I would get rid of majors, so it just, I would just completely eliminated that and instead of focusing on this idea of. What students want to be I that is I want to be an engineer, I want to be a scientist.
We'd focus on what students want to do and we would personalize their learning path to get them to be able to do what it is they wanted to do.
Jim Barrood: Excellent. And with an unlimited innovation grant what would you do? I would make that happen. I like that. All right. This has been a great conversation, folks.
We usually end with a quote, a poem or a saying that's meaningful to you. Michael what do you want to share with us?
Michael Johnson: Mine has always been, find a way to win my head football coach in college. No matter what happens, you find a way to win. I love it. All right, John.
John Pelesko: So I actually, I have a plaque on my desk.
It's a quote from Marcus Aurelius. I'm a big fan of the stoic philosophers and it's the things that you think about, determine the quality of your mind, and I think that's a I important reflection for us all to keep in mind.
Jim Barrood: I like that as well. Thank you so much folks. This has been great.
