HKUST Global Scholar Sharing - Evidence-Based Entrepreneurship for the Commercialization of Research-Based Products

Jim Chung most recently served as the Associate VP for Research, Innovation & Entrepreneurship at the George Washington University (GW), where he founded the GW Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (OIE) in 2010. Under his leadership, the OIE has facilitated the launch of over 350 startups by GW students and faculty through its New Venture Competition, Team Development Program, Mentors-in-Residence, and Lean Innovation programs. These GW entrepreneurs have raised over $1.8 billion and created 2,500 jobs.

Jim has also supported innovation globally through the development of training and ecosystem building initiatives spanning 22 countries and international organizations. Programs such as the Korea Innovation Center (KIC) Tech Frontier and the GW x Penn West Global Build Fellowship champion cross-border entrepreneurship.

Additionally, Jim served as a co-principal investigator for the National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps (NSF I-Corps) Hub: Mid-Atlantic Region. He has been involved in the NSF I-Corps since its inception in 2011, serving at various times as a mentor, instructor, and principal investigator.

He also holds or has held positions on multiple advisory boards, including for the CNBC Disruptor 50 List, DC Innovation & Technology Inclusion Council, VIPA Advisory Committee on Commercialization, Discovery Fund of the University of Maryland, and GW Center for International Business Education and Research. He has been a mentor for TechStars and the US Department of Energy Phase Shift program, and a frequent SBIR/STTR reviewer for the NSF and USDA.

Jim directed the Mtech VentureAccelerator and founded the Chesapeake Bay Seed Capital Fund at the University of Maryland. He began his career in venture capital, private equity, and M&A, and continues to invest in startups as an angel. Some of the companies he has advised or invested in include FiscalNote, TravelBank, Medcura, Mira, Agamatrix, and Ulterra.

Jim’s academic background includes research positions at MIT, Harvard, and the University of Tokyo, where he was a Fulbright Fellow. He has been recognized by Washingtonian Magazine in both 2015 and 2017 as one of the Top 100 Tech Titans in DC and in 2015 by HotTopics.ht as one of the Top 100 Entrepreneurship Professors worldwide. Jim received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Stanford University and was a Ph.D. candidate at MIT.