Steven C. Currall, Ph.D. is Executive Director and Associate Vice Provost for Academic-Corporate Initiatives. In alignment with Harvard’s academic mission, he is responsible for fostering University-wide coordination of corporate engagement activities that support research and innovation and build upon institutional strengths through sponsored research, gifts, and new types of agreements. He has previously led numerous collaborations with large and small companies in the life science, computing, agricultural, and sustainability industries.
Prior to Harvard, Currall served as president of the University of South Florida (USF). During his presidency, USF successfully consolidated three campuses into a single-accredited university and raised approximately $230 million in philanthropic support.
Currall was provost and vice president for academic affairs at Southern Methodist University. At the University of California, Davis, Currall served as senior adviser to the chancellor for strategic projects and initiatives, and as dean of the Graduate School of Management. At University College London, he was the founding chair of the Department of Management Science and Innovation in the Faculty (School) of Engineering Sciences.
At Rice University, he held the William and Stephanie Sick Professorship of Entrepreneurship in the Brown School of Engineering and founded the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship, which assisted in the launch of more than 160 new technology start-up companies that raised in excess of $300 million in equity capital. Currall received Stanford University’s Price Foundation Innovative Entrepreneurship Educator Award, Grand Velocity Award for Academic Entrepreneurship (Kelley School of Business, Indiana University), and Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award (southeast Texas region). His board service has included the 10-campus University of California system’s Global Health Institute and the California Life Sciences Association.
Currall is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts (United Kingdom). His book on university-business-government collaboration entitled, Organized Innovation: A Blueprint for Renewing America’s Prosperity, was published by Oxford University Press. He earned a Ph.D. in organizational behavior from Cornell University, a M.Sc. in social psychology from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a B.A. in psychology from Baylor University.