NSF selects Erwin Gianchandani as assistant director for technology, innovation and partnerships
Washington, D.C. - The U.S. National Science Foundation has selected Erwin Gianchandani to be the inaugural Assistant Director for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships, or TIP. Gianchandani will be leading NSF's newly established TIP Directorate. The TIP Directorate will serve as a crosscutting platform to advance critical and emerging technologies; accelerate the translation of research results from the lab to market and society; and cultivate new education pathways leading to a diverse and skilled future technical workforce comprising researchers, practitioners, technicians and entrepreneurs. This will no doubt expand the geography of innovation and help deliver on our Missing Millions goals.
Gianchandani has served in various roles at NSF over the past decade. He was Deputy Assistant Director for the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering for six years, and twice served as its acting Assistant Director. Gianchandani's leadership and management of CISE included the formulation and implementation of the directorate's $1 billion annual budget, strategic and human capital planning, and oversight of day-to-day operations comprising a team of over 130 people.
Together with colleagues across NSF, Gianchandani has helped lead the development and launch of several new NSF initiatives, including the Smart and Connected Communities program, Civic Innovation Challenge, Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research, and the National Artificial Intelligence Research Institutes.
Most recently, Gianchandani served as Senior Advisor for Translation, Innovation and Partnerships, developing plans for the new TIP Directorate in collaboration with colleagues across government, industry and academia.
Before joining NSF in 2012, Gianchandani was the inaugural director of the Computing Community Consortium, providing leadership to the computing research community in identifying and pursuing bold, high-impact research directions such as health information technology and sustainable computing.
Gianchandani has published extensively and presented at international conferences on computational systems biology. He holds a bachelor's degree in computer science and master's and doctoral degrees in biomedical engineering, all from the University of Virginia.
In 2021, Gianchandani received the Distinguished Presidential Rank Award, awarded to members of the federal government's Senior Executive Service for sustained extraordinary accomplishment. In 2018, he was awarded the Outstanding Young Engineering Graduate Award from the University of Virginia.
Gianchandani began his appointment on March 16, 2022.
For more information on the TIP Directorate, please visit beta.nsf.gov/tip/latest.