Management Group

The Management Group serves in an intermediate capacity between the governing council and the various HRA working groups. This group helps prioritize agendas for the governance council and collaborative action groups, and assists with coordination and strategic guidance.

The current members of the Management Group are:

Dr. Lorne Whitehead currently serves as the Director for the HIBAR Research Alliance. He is the University of British Columbia’s Special Advisor on Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Research and a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. He has held several administrative positions including Associate Dean, Dean pro tem, VP Academic & Provost and Leader of Education Innovation. He holds 143 US patents that find application in computer screens, televisions and lighting products and has launched seven spin-off companies. He received a Ph.D. in Physics from UBC and has considerable experience in technological, business and administrative innovation. From 1983 to 1993 he served as CEO of TIR Systems, a UBC spin-off company that grew to 200 employees before being acquired by a multinational corporation.

Dr. Michele Mossman is currently the Manager for the HIBAR Research Alliance. She is a Research Associate in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of British Columbia, and since 2002 she has been the Laboratory Manager for the UBC Sustainability Solutions Applied Physics Laboratory. From 1998-2006, she was the primary researcher and a co-inventor of the CLEAR electronic paper technology, first as a Ph.D. student and later as a Postdoctoral Fellow. She was a co-founder and consultant to a UBC spin-off company that was incorporated to further develop and commercialize the technology. She received a Ph.D. in Physics from UBC in 2002, and an M.B.A. from UBC’s Sauder School of Business in 2014.

Dr. Gretchen Jordan, Principal of 360 Innovation LLC, is an independent consultant who has worked in evaluation of research and technology development programs and organizations for more than 25 years. She retired as a Principal Member of Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories in 2011. Recent projects include developing evaluation frameworks for an international agricultural research for development organization, a California Energy Commission technology to market program, a basic science research institute, and an alliance for health services and policy research. She was the co-editor of the journal Research Evaluation from 2008 to 2015 and has a Ph.D. in Economics.

Dr. Wesley (Wes) Patrick is a Technical Advisor at Southwest Research Institute® (SwRI®), one of the oldest and largest independent nonprofit research and development organizations in the nation. Prior to his retirement, he was Executive Director, Geosciences and Engineering Department, which includes the Center for Nuclear Waste Regulatory Analyses (CNWRA). The CNWRA is a federally funded research and development center operated by SwRI on behalf of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). He has successfully led several complex highly visible projects and is a recognized technical expert in design and execution of large-scale multi-disciplinary field programs. Dr. Patrick’s education encompasses civil and mining engineering, with facilitating skills in computer science and digital simulation. A rock mechanician and field experimentalist by training, he holds a B.S degree from Michigan Technological University, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the Missouri University of Science and Technology.

Dr. Lyle Schwartz is a professor in the Institute for Advanced Discovery & Innovation at the University of South Florida and retired director of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. He was professor of materials science and engineering at Northwestern University for 20 years and director of Northwestern’s Materials Research Center for five of those years. For the subsequent 12 years, he was director of the Materials Science and Engineering Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). After NIST, he moved to the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, where, as director, he had responsibility for the entire basic research program of the Air Force. He has played a significant role in shaping government policies on many materials issues.

Dr. Marc-David L. Seidel is the RBC Financial Group Professor of Entrepreneurship, Director of the W. Maurice Young Centre for Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Research, and Associate Professor of OBHR at the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia. He is a Former Associate Editor of Administrative Science Quarterly, former Chair of the Academy of Management Organization and Management Theory Division and a HIBAR Research Alliance Fellow. His research interests include Community Forms (C-Forms) of organizing, distributed trust technologies, innovation ecosystems, life course, discrimination and social networks.