Center Staff
Caroline Wagner, Director
Dr. Caroline S. Wagner, an expert in the field of science and technology and its association to policy, society, and innovation, holds the Ambassador Milton A. and Roslyn Z. Wolf Chair in International Affairs at the John Glenn School of Public Affairs, The Ohio State University.
Wagner earned her doctorate from the University of Amsterdam in Science and Technology Dynamics; she received her Master of Arts degree in Science, Technology and Public Policy from George Washington University and holds a Bachelor of Arts from Trinity College.
Her career in science and technology policy analysis has spanned more than thirty years. At The RAND Corporation, she was deputy to the director of the Science & Technology Policy Institute, a research center serving the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
Her service within the United States federal government, includes four years as a professional staff member for the U.S. Congress Committee on Science, Space, and Technology while the Honorable George E. Brown, Jr. was Chairman. At the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, Caroline worked on the assessment of Technology, Innovation and Regional Economic Development. While serving on the staff of the United States State Department, Caroline was assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Seoul Korea to study technology-based growth. She has also been a senior analyst at SRI International and a research scientist at George Washington University’s Center for International Science and Technology Policy.
She has been an advisor to the European Commission, the World Bank, the United States National Science Foundation, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and several governments. As part of the United Nations Millennium Development Project, Wagner served on the Task Force on Science, Technology, and Innovation and served as an author of the final report.
Dr. Wagner is an advisor to the Places and Spaces, and Science Maps visualization projects, headed by Professor Katy Bőrner, University of Indiana. An Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Wagner is the North American editor of the Science & Public Policy Journal. She is also the author of the book “The New Invisible College: Science for Development.”
Dr. Wagner’s website has links to many of her publications.
Blake Thompson
Vice President of Institutional Affairs, Battelle, and Former Interim Director of Battelle Center for Mathematics and Science Education Policy
Dr. Blake Thompson currently holds a joint Vice President position at Battelle and Ohio State University. In this dual role he leads the broad interactions between the two organizations in the areas of science and technology, economic development, and institutional relations. In addition, he works to advance the alignment of Battelle’s education initiatives. Active in the Columbus community, Dr. Thompson serves as the Secretary of the Board of the TechColumbus Technology Business Incubator, and board member of Campus Partners, KIPP Journey Academy, The Mathematical Biosciences Institute, and SciTech.
Dr. Thompson previously worked as Director of University Partnerships for UT-Battelle, the managing contractor for Oak Ridge National Laboratory. In his role, he was responsible for the development and management of effective educational partnerships between the laboratory and leading academic institutions by creating new research opportunities, and increasing educational outreach and economic development/technology transfer endeavors. He also worked as part of the University of Tennessee System Administration.
Previously, Thompson served as the Republican Deputy Staff Director of the United States Senate Committee on Appropriations, the largest committee of the Senate, and as Legislative Director to Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi where he was responsible for the Senator’s public policy matters.
Thompson received his Ph.D. from the University of Mississippi Graduate School, and an Executive Master’s degree from Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. He also holds Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the University of Mississippi School of Pharmacy.
Contributing Faculty
Affiliated Faculty
Doctoral Students
Dae Joong Kim
Dae Joong Kim’s main academic interest is in combining network approaches and public (organization) management approaches to address complex public and organizational problems and build a system to deliver public services effectively. His specific research areas are dynamic and multimode network analysis both within and among organizations, computational organization theory, adaptation and evolution, text mining, and the impact of communication on organizational performance, and information/knowledge diffusion. He has presented relevant papers to the International Network for Social Network Analysis conference and the Political Networks conference. He is now involved in the NIH project of the Battelle center to build an Agent-Based Model framework for postdoctoral researcher career choice in medical and health science.
Lisa Christen Gajary Lisa’s research focuses on science and technology policy with respect to higher education institutional structures. Her interests include research center organizational strategies, industry-university interactions, innovation and technology-transfer mechanisms, and the nature of scientific collaborations. Along with her doctoral studies, Lisa works at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center to develop and implement scientific resource allocation policies and to manage its research support operations. Previous to this role, Lisa conducted laboratory research focused on the molecular biology of HIV-1 replication and co-authored several papers in The Journal of Virology and in Virology. Lisa earned her M.A. in Public Policy and Management from the John Glenn School of Public Affairs, and her B.S. in Zoology from Miami University.