Lisa Chichura, Ph.D., is Director of the Strategic Partnership for Industrial Resurgence (SPIR) at Stony Brook University. She received her BA in physics and mathematics from Smith College and went on to pursue a doctorate in high energy physics from Johns Hopkins. Initially, after graduation, she worked in the private sector, first for an engineering consulting firm and then for a military test house that was transitioning to support commercial markets, specifically the automotive industry.