Dr. Stephen E. Cross, GTRI Director

Contact Information

Dr. Stephen E. Cross

Georgia Tech Research Institute
212 Centennial Research Building
400 W. 10th Street
Atlanta, Georgia 30332-0801
phone: 404-407-7400

Dr. Stephen E. Cross is a vice president of the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) and director of the Georgia Tech Research Institute. He also holds faculty appointments as a professor in industrial and systems engineering and a professor in the College of Computing. In addition, he serves as the executive director of Georgia Tech Ireland and the secretary of the Georgia Tech Applied Research Corporation.

The Georgia Legislature created GTRI in 1919 to facilitate industry adoption of leading-edge research. GTRI currently employs a staff of nearly 1,200 in Georgia and 10 additional operating locations throughout the United States and Ireland, with annual research expenditures exceeding $130 million.

Dr. Cross was a program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in Washington, D.C. before he joined Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (USA) in 1994. At Carnegie Mellon University, he was the director and CEO of the Software Engineering Institute. While there, he also held a faculty appointment as a principal research scientist in the Institute for Software Research International and the Robotics Institute. Prior to joining Georgia Tech in 2003, Dr. Cross was profiled in BusinessWeek Online in a special issue entitled Gurus of Tomorrow's Tech in 2002.

During his career, Dr. Cross has:

• Published over 60 papers on information technology and technology transition
• Presented invited keynotes at numerous international conferences
• Provided expert testimony to the U.S. Congress on several occasions

Dr. Cross served as a judge for the 2007 Wall Street Journal’s Technology Innovation Awards, which recognize innovations that break with conventional processes and go beyond marginal improvements in existing products and services. He also currently serves on advisory boards for the:

• Alabama A&M Research Institute
• University of Tennessee Space Institute
• Metro Area Atlanta Chamber of Commerce (co-chair of the Technology Marketing Committee)
• Several high technology companies

In addition, he has chaired and served on advisory boards or study panels for the:

• Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
• Defense Science Board
• Jet Propulsion Laboratory
• National Research Council
• Science Foundation Ireland
• United States Air Force Scientific Advisory Board (SAB), where he lead the 2006 study on disruptive innovation for the SAB

Dr. Cross is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and a former editor-in-chief of the IEEE Intelligent Systems.  He is the associate editor of the Journal of Information, Knowledge, and Systems Management.