Matt Marx, PhD, Advisory Council Chair
Vice Provost for Entrepreneurship, Innovation and External Engagement
Matt Marx is vice provost for entrepreneurship, innovation, and external engagement in Cornell Research & Innovation and the Bruce F. Failing, Sr. Professor of Entrepreneurship & Innovation in the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business.
In his role as a vice provost, Marx leads entrepreneurship, innovation, technology transfer, and corporate partnerships across Cornell’s multicampus innovation ecosystem. He oversees Cornell’s Center for Technology Licensing – which serves the Ithaca campus, Cornell Tech, and Weill Cornell Medicine – as well as a portfolio of Ithaca-based programs including Entrepreneurship at Cornell, the Center for Regional Economic Advancement, the Praxis Center for Venture Development, and the Center for Life Science Ventures.
Marx’s research focuses on reducing barriers to the commercialization of science and technology – challenges that he experienced firsthand during a decade as an executive and engineer at two startups in the speech-recognition industry. His articles have appeared in leading journals across multiple disciplines, including Management Science, the Review of Economics and Statistics, Administrative Science Quarterly, the Review of Financial Studies, Organization Science, the American Sociological Review, and Science. His work on employee non-compete agreements and job mobility played a key role in policy reforms for Hawaii and Massachusetts. Press coverage includes The New York Times, BBC, The Economist, Washington Post, Boston Globe, The Atlantic, Wired, Fortune, Forbes, and Bloomberg. He serves as department editor for Entrepreneurship & Innovation at Management Science and is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).
As head of the Innovation Information Initiative steering committee, Marx curates large-scale, open datasets for the scientific commons. Available at RelianceOnScience.org, a dataset he compiled of prior-art citations from patents to scientific articles has been downloaded more than 100,000 times and used by scholars worldwide. His work has been supported by more than $2.5 million in grants and awards from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and other sources.
Marx served as the vice president of solutions delivery at Tellme Networks and director of customer solutions at SpeechWorks, two speech-recognition startups that achieved a combined $1.4 billion in equity value. Marx holds six patents, including one that ranks in the top 2% of patent citations worldwide.
Before joining Cornell’s faculty in 2021, Marx was an associate professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the Boston University Questrom School of Business. He holds a B.S. in symbolic systems from Stanford University; a master’s degree from the MIT Media Lab; and an MBA and a doctoral degree from Harvard University.
Marcus Smolka, PhD
Professor, Interim Director of the Biotechnology Insititute, Director of NYSTAR Center for Advanced Technology (CAT)
Marcus Smolka is Associate Vice Provost for Research and Innovation at Cornell, a Professor in the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, and a member of the Weill Institute for Cell and Molecular Biology. He received a Ph. D. in Brazil, at the State University of Campinas, and worked as a FAPESP fellow at the Institute for Systems Biology (Seattle, WA). In 2003, Dr. Smolka moved to San Diego, CA, for a post-doctorate at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research. He joined Cornell in 2008.
Smolka pioneered the use of mass spectrometry for the study of kinase substrates and mapping of phosphorylation signaling networks. With grants and awards from the NIH, ACS, Emerson Collective and various Cornell Initiatives, his lab has been applying proteomic approaches, in combination with genetics and biochemistry, to investigate fundamental mechanisms of genome maintenance, and their connections to cancer and reproductive biology. The Smolka Lab mapped the action of DNA damage signaling kinases in yeast and mammals, leading to the understanding of the mechanisms by which kinases control DNA repair, checkpoints, cell cycle and transcription. As a Research Scholar for the American Cancer Society, Smolka uncovered novel mechanisms for deactivation of DNA damage checkpoint signaling kinases, establishing novel paradigms for signaling regulation. Current work in the Smolka Lab continues to expand the network of DNA damage signaling in the context of cancer biology and meiosis. Smolka also engages in a range of collaborative efforts using quantitative proteomics to elucidate fundamental molecular mechanisms underlying metabolic control, cell polarity, protein trafficking, neurodegenerative diseases and bacteria-host interactions.
Ying Yang, Advisory Council Secretary
Interim Director, Center for Life Science Ventures
In July 2019, Ying Yang joined the Center for Life Science Ventures (CLSV) as an Assistant Director and later was promoted to Associate Director supporting both CLSV and Praxis Center. In 2025, Ying became the Interim Director of CLSV.
Ying is a skilled strategist and a trusted mentor with a strong background in business strategy, project management, and executive coaching, complemented by a decade of global consulting experience at McKinsey & Company’s life science practice and an MBA in healthcare management from the Wharton School.