Project Description

Cherrie Hughes joined the Office of Research at the University of Florida (UF) in December 2015, where she is serving as Assistant Director for Industrial Outreach. She collaborates with UF faculty, statewide institutes, research-focused entities, and other stakeholders in order to promote research interest, partnerships, collaboration, and funding from industrial entities to expand the UF’s breadth and depth of research expertise by building corporate, academic and government strategic alliances. She also serves as the Program Manager of the Florida High Tech Matching Grants Fund and the Seed Funding program UFLIPS, she helps connects industry with academic research partners to engage in translational research with a commercial outcome. She has over 20 years of experience in higher education in the US and abroad and has designed and created extra-curricular programs, learning living initiatives, academic Research Centers and experiential learning labs and is even the co-creator of an online learning tool for Supply Chain and Logistics. At the University of Maryland, in the Maryland Industrial Partnerships (MIPS) Program, one of the oldest Matching Grants Program in the country, she recruited companies and faculty to the program, managed the proposal to award process and managed its technical projects. In addition, she worked with regional entities to track economic development metrics and created financial and administrative operations for the Program.