TIP Leadership

Erwin Gianchandani
NSF Assistant Director for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships

Erwin Gianchandani, the U.S. National Science Foundation's assistant director for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships, leads the recently established TIP Directorate.

Gianchandani has worked at NSF since 2012. Before becoming the NSF assistant director for TIP, he served as the senior advisor for Translation, Innovation and Partnerships for over a year, where he helped develop plans for the new NSF TIP Directorate in collaboration with colleagues across NSF, other government agencies, industry and academia.

During the previous six years, Gianchandani was the NSF deputy assistant director for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (NSF CISE), twice serving as acting assistant director. Gianchandani's leadership and management of NSF CISE included formulating and implementing the directorate's $1 billion annual budget, strategic and human capital planning and oversight of daily operations for a team of over 130.

Gianchandani has led 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 program.

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.

Erwin Gianchandani, the U.S. National Science Foundation's assistant director for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships (NSF TIP), leads the recently established directorate. Before becoming the NSF assistant director for TIP, he served as the senior advisor for Translation, Innovation and Partnerships, where he helped develop plans for the new TIP Directorate in collaboration with colleagues across NSF, other government agencies, industry and academia. During the previous six years, Gianchandani was the NSF deputy assistant director for Computer and Information Science and Engineering, twice serving as acting assistant director. 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 holds a doctorate in biomedical engineering 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.

Graciela (Gracie) Narcho
NSF Deputy Assistant Director for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships

Graciela (Gracie) Narcho is the U.S. National Science Foundation's deputy assistant director for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships (NSF TIP).

Narcho has been with NSF for nearly three decades, serving in a broad range of roles spanning the development of NSF TIP, grants and agreements oversight, program management and diversity and inclusion efforts.

Narcho is a change agent for positive human capital reforms, business practice innovations and NSF policy development. Together with colleagues across NSF, Narcho has helped develop and launch several NSF initiatives, including the industry-government partnerships for the National Artificial Intelligence Research Institutes program, the Global Environment for Networking Innovation, the Computing Community Consortium, and Computer and Information Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowships.

As an NSF grants official, Narcho developed the funding arrangement for the U.S. Civilian Research and Development Foundation for the newly independent States of the Former Soviet Union, the first NSF congressionally mandated, endowed, non-governmental, nonprofit foundation; and negotiated the first jointly developed and funded government-industry NSF Engineering Research Center.

In recent years, Narcho co-led the NSF partnerships working group, streamlining processes and procedures for NSF partnerships with industry, nonprofits, other federal agencies and international funding organizations.

Narcho has also served in senior leadership roles within two NSF directorates. In Computer and Information Science and Engineering (NSF CISE), she led the largest transformation of the workforce structure and responsibilities in NSF CISE history, resulting in a more flexible workforce. As deputy and acting division director for the then-Division of Industrial Innovation and Partnerships within the NSF Engineering Directorate, Narcho led policy development and programs that accelerated the translation of federally funded research into market opportunities. Under Narcho's leadership, NSF initiated a new pre-submission pitch process for small businesses, providing more immediate feedback to early-stage startups.

Narcho received her bachelor's degree in economics from Tufts University and a master's in public administration from George Washington University, with a concentration in procurement and contracting.

Kerri Dugan
Acting Division Director for Innovation and Technology Ecosystems
Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships

Kerri Dugan is the acting division director for Innovation and Technology Ecosystems within the U.S. National Science Foundation Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships. Dugan joined NSF in August 2024.

Before joining NSF, Dugan provided leadership to the Biological Technologies Office within the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) from 2019 to 2024, spending one year as the deputy director and four years as director. She also served as the senior technical advisor to the principal deputy assistant director of Critical Technologies within the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. Before DARPA and DOD, Dugan served in several leadership roles at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency from 2007 to 2019, developing multidisciplinary research programs to understand how the effects of complex natural systems and cultural dynamics impact national security.

From 2016 to 2018, Dugan led the Office of the Director for National Intelligence's Intelligence Community (IC) Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Program and worked with the chief science advisor for national security in the United Kingdom to establish the U.K.-IC Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Programme, fostering long-term scientific relationships between academia and the IC while supporting basic research of interest to the IC. 

From 2000 to 2007, Dugan led biological sciences research at the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Laboratory Division, where she focused on developing and transitioning new assays for human and microbial genetic identification to operations. 

Dugan holds a doctorate from Princeton University in molecular biology, as well as master's and bachelor's degrees in chemistry from the College of William and Mary.

Barry Johnson
Division Director for Translational Impacts
Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships

Barry Johnson joined the U.S. National Science Foundation Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships (NSF TIP) in June 2022 as the division director for Translational Impacts.

Johnson brings a wealth of experience in industry and startups and has a long history of building public and private partnerships. For example, in 2001, he co-founded the biometric security company Privaris Inc., where he served as chairman of the board of directors and, for nearly four years, president and CEO. In 2014, Apple Inc. acquired Privaris' patent portfolio. Johnson was also the founding president and executive director of the Commonwealth Center for Advanced Manufacturing, an applied research center and not-for-profit public-private partnership comprising industry, academia and government. He has consulted with more than a dozen companies and federal agencies.

Johnson also has significant government and academic experience. From March 2015 to January 2019, he served as the division director for the then-Division of Industrial Innovation and Partnerships within the NSF Engineering Directorate. During that time, he spent nearly a year as acting assistant director for Engineering, receiving the NSF Distinguished Service Award. He was instrumental in creating the NSF Non-Academic Research Internships for Graduate Students program, among other accomplishments.

Johnson is the L.A. Lacy Distinguished Professor of Engineering at the University of Virginia's Charles L. Brown Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and has been the director of the computer engineering program. He served as an inaugural co-principal investigator for the Engineering Research Visioning Alliance, a national partnership that convenes, catalyzes and empowers the engineering community to identify future research directions.

Johnson earned his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Virginia. He has published more than 150 technical articles, written several books and is an inventor on more than 40 issued patents. Johnson is a Class of 2016 National Academy of Inventors fellow and is also a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.