Jay Walsh, Vice President for Economic Development and Innovation, University of Illinois System I oversee the University of Illinois System ensure that innovations grow beyond the university and into the private sector through a pipeline of idea acceleration units and connected partnerships. At the University of Illinois, I drove the University’s application for and attainment of an FDA EUA for the novel saliva-based test for SARS-CoV-2 that has already been used >8M times at all 12 public universities, 48 community colleges, and >1000 K-12 schools in Illinois, as well as in universities, schools, and businesses from Maine to California in the US and internationally. At Northwestern, I was the University’s Vice President for Research from 2007 until 2019. I currently serve on the Board of Directors at MxD, the Board of Governors at Argonne National Laboratory, the Board of Directors for Current, the Board of Visitors for Vanderbilt’s Engineering School, and I chair the Board of the Chicago Council on Science and Technology. Previously, I served on the Board of Directors at Fermi National Laboratory, the Illinois Governor’s Innovation Council, the Naval Research Advisory Committee, and the U.S. Secretary of Navy Advisory Panel. I earned my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and his Ph.D. degree in Medical Engineering from a joint Harvard Medical School – MIT program.