Chief Scientific Officer & Vice President, Research and Development; Research Admin Executive

Department IU LAB (IN-LAB-IUINA)
Department Information

The Indiana University Launch Accelerator for Biosciences (IU LAB) is a first-of-its-kind academic-industry initiative harnessing the power of Indiana University's $1 billion plus research enterprise to strengthen Indiana's $102 billion life sciences economy. Supported by a $138 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc., IU LAB is constructing a 150,000-square-foot, five-story facility in the 16 Tech Innovation District slated to open in 2027.

The facility will house five interconnected spaces: the Academic Gateway, Futures Center, Bio Start-up Center, Public-Private Partnerships Center, and Joint Center of Excellence for Point of Care Precision Medicine - designed to bridge discovery science with commercial and clinical impact. IU LAB's research priorities span diabetes and obesity, neuroscience, Alzheimer's disease, rare diseases, cancer, bone engineering, and regenerative medicine, with a growing emphasis on the convergence of biosciences and artificial intelligence.

IU LAB anchors a network of landmark industry partnerships - including a clinical trial and research agreement with Eli Lilly and Company valued at up to $40 million, a five-year All Services Agreement with Cook Medical spanning all nine IU campuses, and a three-year research and workforce development partnership with Zimmer Biomet. Through the IU Health Incubator at IU LAB, powered by gener8tor and Plug and Play in partnership with the CEOs of Indiana Corporate Partnership, up to 40 biotech and life science startups per year receive pre-accelerator and accelerator support to scale within Indiana's innovation ecosystem.

The Chief Scientific Officer & Vice President, Research and Development is the senior scientific and translational leader of IU LAB, responsible for defining the organization's research vision and architecting high-impact R&D partnerships that translate Indiana University's scientific strengths into industry-aligned programs, licensing agreements, and commercial pathways that generate measurable economic and clinical impact. This leader will serve as the senior scientific voice of IU LAB while simultaneously building the research and development infrastructure needed to grow its portfolio of industry collaborations, sponsored research, consortium-based initiatives, and startup ventures.

Reporting to the IU LAB President & CEO, the CSO & VP of R&D will bridge IU's world-class research faculty across IU's nine campuses with corporate R&D organizations, venture capital, federal funders, and clinical partners, ensuring that institutional capabilities are organized into coherent, industry-relevant offerings and federal grant opportunities. The CSO/VP will also oversee IU LAB's research cores and scientific programming, ensuring alignment, excellence, and scalability across all translational activities.

The ideal candidate combines deep scientific credibility in the life sciences with a demonstrated ability to design complex, multi-stakeholder models and build revenue-generating programs from the ground up. This role is modeled on best practices from leading university innovation platforms and is designed to accelerate IU LAB's trajectory toward becoming a nationally preeminent hub for bioscience commercialization.

• Define and steward IU LAB's scientific roadmap across its core research priorities: diabetes and obesity, neuroscience and Alzheimer's disease, rare diseases, cancer, bone engineering, regenerative medicine, and the convergence of biosciences with artificial intelligence and machine learning, ensuring alignment with both faculty strengths and industry demand.
• Lead the design and coordination of research cores across IU LAB, establishing a unified, partner-facing R&D infrastructure.
• Identify and evaluate the commercial viability of IU's research pipeline, identifying high-potential discoveries for licensing, spin-out, or co-development with industry partners.
• Chair or co-chair IU LAB's Scientific Advisory Committee, engaging external thought leaders to validate…