News Release

Stephen Halpern

"Steve Halpern is uniquely suited for this position, thanks to more than twenty-five years of cross-industry experience as an entrepreneur, senior executive, educator and consultant to Fortune 100 and technology start-up companies," said Joe Bear, executive director of the von Liebig Center. "He has been a visionary in the commercialization of cutting-edge technology to augment businesses and to create opportunities in a variety of industries."

Prior to joining the von Liebig Center, Halpern was vice president of business development at Construction Bidboard, a data services company for the construction industry. He led the acquisition of over $9 billion of public-works projects displayed on the ebidboard site. At Praja, Inc., a multi-media and knowledge management company, Halpern was vice president of production and professional services.  He created the departments of and instituted processes for production services, training, support and eLearning.  As co-founder of BioQ, a life sciences company, Halpern conceptualized and implemented Internet-based solutions for companies undergoing the FDA regulatory process.  Prior to that, Halpern headed up publishing operations at GTE's entertainment unit and led their entry into interactive video games. Several award-winning and hit titles in a variety of genres were published under his leadership.

Halpern has been a pioneer in the integration of full-motion video into interactive education titles at Mediashare Inc.  As a visionary in interactive, computer-based education he co-founded a company that produced IBM's most comprehensive series in the life sciences, which sold worldwide for over 10 years. As a consultant to IBM, Halpern served on the development team which designed a microcomputer-based laboratory for use in education.  As an award-winning educator, he was also co-principal investigator in partnership with IBM, New York Academy of Sciences and the NYC Board of Education for two NSF grants disseminated nationally.

Halpern received his B.S. in Biological Sciences and M.S. in Science Education from Long Island University.

While fostering entrepreneurism education on the campus, the von Liebig Center also provides funding for internal technology projects that have strong commercial potential. Since the center's inception in 2001, it has awarded more than $1.2 million in support of 31 projects led by faculty members of the Jacobs School.