There shall be a minimum of four (4) faculty representatives to the Council (three-year term, renewable). Two shall be selected from the Engineering, one shall be selected from Life Sciences, and one shall be selected from the Johnson School or Dyson School.
David Putnam, PhD
Professor, Biomedical Engineering/ Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
David Putnam joined the College of Engineering at Cornell University in 2002. Prior to joining the engineering faculty, he was an NIH postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Chemical Engineering at MIT in the laboratory of Professor Robert Langer. From 2000 until 2002, he held a joint appointment with MIT and as a Scientific co-Founder of a startup company, TransForm Pharmaceuticals, Inc., which was acquired by Johnson & Johnson in March, 2005. In 2008-2009 he was an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at PureTech Ventrures in Boston, MA where he focused on emerging technologies in the field of drug delivery. He is currently a member of seven Editorial Advisory Boards including Pharmaceutical Research, Journal of Controlled Release, Analytical Biochemistry and Experimental Biology and Medicine. His funding sources include NIH, NSF, the Coulter Foundation and the Department of Defense. He is a Fellow of AIMBE (reserved for the top 2% of Biomedical Engineers in the United States) and the Coulter Foundation. He received his B.S. in Pharmacy from Union University and his Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Chemistry from the University of Utah.
Emmanuel Giannelis, PhD
Associate Dean, College of Engineering
Dr. Emmanuel Giannelis is the Co-Director of the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Regional Network – Mid-Atlantic. He plays a pivotal role in directing the Network’s strategy, development, and innovation across its members. As Cornell’s Walter R. Read Professor of Engineering, Dr. Giannelis steers collaborations between Cornell Engineering and Weill Cornell Medicine as the Founding Director of Engineering Innovations in Medicine at Cornell University, a pioneering hub that synergizes education, research, translation, and commercialization at the nexus of engineering and medicine.
Prior to his current roles, Dr. Giannelis was Cornell’s Vice President for Research and Innovation where he led the university’s efforts to enhance technology commercialization, startup creation, and economic development. His career at Cornell also includes positions as Vice Provost for Research and Associate Dean for Research where he promoted innovation and entrepreneurship among graduate students.
Dr. Giannelis’s research is concentrated on nanomaterials with applications in energy, biomedical, and environmental fields, and his group is globally recognized as a leader in nanohybrids and nanocomposites.
Zachary Shulman, JD
Director of Entrepreneurship at Cornell and Senior Lecturer at the Johnson Graduate School of Management
Zach Shulman has been Director of Entrepreneurship at Cornell since October 2013 and a Managing Partner at Cayuga Venture Fund since 2004. Prior to his current roles, Zach was a Senior Lecturer at Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management and headed up many entrepreneurship-related programmatic activities there. Prior to that, Zach was a corporate lawyer in Boston and Ithaca and also General Counsel at a tech company that raised boatloads of venture capital in 1999 and 2000; ultimately, Zach took that company through bankruptcy. Zach earned a Bachelor of Science from the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations and graduated from Cornell University Law School, magna cum laude.
Julia Thom Levy, PhD
Julia Thom-Levy is a Professor of Physics at Cornell University, where she has been a faculty member since 2005. She is a leading experimental particle physicist specializing in Heavy Quark Physics, Hadron Collider Physics, and Solid State Detectors for Particle Physics, with a primary research focus on data analysis at the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. Julia held several key leadership roles at Cornell, including: Vice Provost for Academic Innovation (2017–2023): Where she led the creation of the Center for Teaching Innovation (CTI) and expanded the Active Learning Initiative across the College of Arts and Sciences, Associate Vice Provost for Research in the Physical Sciences (2022–2024), Deputy Director of the Cornell Laboratory for Accelerator-Based Science and Education (CLASSE) and Chair of the Physics Department (2025–present). Her research also extends into X-ray science, electron microscopy, and the scientific study of cultural heritage objects using synchrotron X-rays, often in collaboration with art historians and archaeologists.