Errol Arkilic Appointed Chief Innovation Officer and Executive Director at UCI Beall Applied Innovation

Dear colleagues,

On behalf of Chancellor Gillman, I am pleased to announce that Errol Arkilic has been named chief innovation officer and executive director at UCI Beall Applied Innovation, effective October 1, 2021.

An expert on technology transfer and entrepreneurship, Errol Arkilic has served since 2014 as co-founder of M34 Capital, a private investment company that supports seed and early-stage projects from academic and corporate research labs. In this role, he focuses on turning federally funded research projects into companies across a broad range of technologies and geographies and is an active board member for several startups.

Errol Arkilic also worked as an advisor and an instructor at the University of California, Berkeley. Since 2015, he has been a senior advisor for its National Science Foundation Innovation Corps node, providing commercialization assistance across campus, including capital formation, intellectual property strategy and team building. Since 2017, he has taught a course on lean transfer in which he helps teams formed around UC Berkeley intellectual property explore business models.

Previously, he was the founding and lead program director for the NSF I-Corps program, heading the effort from its inception in 2011 to 2013. Also at the NSF, from 2003 to 2011, he was the lead software and services director for the small-business innovation research and small-business technology transfer programs.

Errol Arkilic earned a Ph.D. in aeronautical/astronautical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a founder of RealIndustry.org, a nonprofit dedicated to entrepreneur education for science and engineering graduates.

I am grateful to the members of the search committee and its chair, Kyriacos A. Athanasiou, Henry Samueli Chair in Engineering and Distinguished Professor of biomedical engineering, for their contributions to this nationwide search. In addition, I would like to extend my appreciation to David Gibbons, who is currently serving as interim chief innovation officer and executive director at UCI Beall Applied Innovation.

Please join me in congratulating Errol Arkilic on his new role and welcoming him to UCI.

Sincerely,

Hal Stern
Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor
Chancellor’s Professor, Department of Statistics