DR. MOHAMED ABOUSALEM, ph.d., mba, 

Building a Thriving Research Culture in Comprehensive Academic Institutions

Dr. Mohamed Abousalem is the Vice President for Research and Innovation (VPRI) at San José State University (SJSU), the President of the Board of Directors of the SJSU Research Foundation, and the Chair of the Council of Chief Research Officers of the California State University (CSU). As the inaugural VPRI at SJSU, Dr. Abousalem provides executive leadership of SJSU’s research and innovation enterprise. He is leading the creation of productive relationships and developing and implementing strategies that increase SJSU competitiveness and expand its external funding opportunities. He is also building the institutional innovation support infrastructure to facilitate the offering and coordination of entrepreneurship support services that enable SJSU faculty and students bring their inventions, ideas and methodologies to practice for the benefit of the local and global communities.
Dr. Abousalem has over 30 years of technical, business, and administrative management experience. Most recently, at University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC), he provided executive leadership and coordination of the UCSC intellectual property management and licensing along with the development of industry alliances and the management of innovation and entrepreneurship support programs. He led the multi-fold growth of UCSC intellectual property portfolio and licensing transactions. Through successful community partnerships, he established the Startup Sandbox biotech wet-lab incubator in Santa Cruz for UCSC startups and the SVLink accelerator for UC entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley.
Prior to UC, he was the founding Chief Executive Officer of TECTERRA Inc., a Calgary not-for-profit innovation support organization supporting start-up and small companies across Canada develop and commercialize innovative technologies. Under his leadership, TECTERRA invested over $37 million in supporting 200 startup companies across Canada and 25 applied research projects in Alberta, which generated over $325 million in economic impact and prosperity for the entrepreneurs and companies supported, the applied research institutions involved and the community.
Prior to TECTERRA, Mohamed had several executive management roles in industry including Hemisphere GPS in Canada and Magellan GPS in Silicon Valley. He had several leadership responsibilities including product development, corporate development, general management, marketing communications, and human resources. In these roles, he developed and launched major technology solutions, strategic alliance programs, and corporate strategies for various worldwide market segments. Mohamed’s earlier research work in the development and application of the global positioning system (GPS) technology was successfully incorporated in the products and technologies of several companies in USA and Canada.
Dr. Abousalem is Governor Gavin Newsom’s CSU appointee on the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) governing board, a member of the Knight Foundation Community Advisory Council, and serves on the Board of the Bay Area Science and Innovation Consortium (BASIC). He is also the Chair of the Board of Litus Inc., a Calgary company that offers advanced nanotechnology for efficient and environmentally-responsible lithium production. From 2009 to 2019, he was member/Chair of the Board of Nanalysis, a Calgary company that develops and manufactures portable Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectrometers leading – he led the company through its growth and transition from a startup to public listing on the TSX Venture. Dr. Abousalem was also a Board member of the Santa Cruz Startup Sandbox bio-tech incubator in the period 2017-2019.
Dr. Abousalem received his B.S. (1989) in civil engineering from Alexandria University, Egypt; M.S. (1993) and Ph.D. (1996) in geomatics engineering from University of Calgary, Canada; and MBA (2005) from Santa Clara University, USA.