Michael Kinch, PhD
Chief Innovation Officer

Dr. Michael Kinch is the first-ever Chief Innovation Officer (CINO) at Stony Brook University. As CINO, Kinch leads the Office of Economic Development and provides direction and oversight of campus-wide initiatives related to accelerating innovation and economic development, including incubation and technology transfer. His efforts focus on technology-based entrepreneurship, venture capital, and other sources of startup investment, as well as the research commercialization and economic development programs from faculty and student research and initiatives. In addition, Kinch and his staff collaborate with departments and colleges/schools across campus to amplify the university’s service to advance Stony Brook’s economic impact on the region and develop partnerships with external entities that benefit the university and help advance economic development interests of these external entities.

Prior to this position, Kinch served as associate vice chancellor, founder of the Centers for Research Innovation in Biotechnology and Drug Discovery and professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at Washington University in St. Louis. There he helped lead entrepreneurship activities and founded the Centers for Research Innovation in Biotechnology (CRIB) and Drug Discovery (CDD), which analyzes innovation in the science and business of medicines. At Yale University, he founded and led the Yale Center for Molecular Discovery. He has been a lecturer at the Krieger Program in Biotechnology at John Hopkins University; associate professor at the Indiana University School of Medicine, West Lafayette Campus at Purdue University; and served as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Kinch has worked in the private sector overseeing Research and Development as Vice President for Research and Development/Chief Scientific Officer at Functional Genetics, Inc. and Head of Cancer Biology & Translational Sciences at Medimmune, Inc. He is also the author of six books, has published extensively in peer-reviewed publications and participated in national media appearances and interviews about his research.

Kinch earned his PhD in Immunology from Duke University Medical Center and his BS in Molecular Genetics.