About Matt McKillip

Matt McKillip is the Director of Research Relations for the College of Technology at Purdue University.  He markets academic discoveries, seeks support for collaborative research and leads the College’s industrial and government relations.  His focus is cultivating relationships and innovations that solve pressing challenges while creating educational and entrepreneurial opportunities.  Matt also serves as the managing director of Purdue’s alternative aviation fuel center; AirTies (Air Transport Institute for Environmental Sustainability) and is the co-chair of the College of Technology’s Commercialization Strategic Planning team.  Matt is assisting Purdue in its efforts to improve technology commercialization by studying Purdue’s processes and those at institutions considered premiere at launching new companies.  He is also helping to organize a Purdue-wide entrepreneurship club, to take Purdue’s entrepreneurship boot camp and high school entrepreneurship academies on the road across the State and to organize the College’s Center for Technology Innovation.  Matt is the advisor for the Purdue International Student Alliance and is a volunteer in Purdue’s International Friendship Program.

Matt is an economic development and strategy consultant and serves on the boards of two companies.  He has extensive international, executive, and entrepreneurial experience and lived for nearly a decade overseas.  He served as the US CEO of CMS-Katra, an Indian multi-national and started Procter & Gamble’s (P&G’s) subsidiary in Portugal.  Matt started and sold two high tech firms, one in Europe and the other in the USA.  Matt has also led international trade missions to Europe and Asia.  He served as mayor of Kokomo, Indiana and earned a fellowship on “Governing in the Global Age” at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University.  Matt graduated with highest distinction from Purdue University and was later honored by Purdue as a 2005 Distinguished Alumnus.  Additional information on Matt may be viewed at www.linkedin.com/in/mmckillip.

Contact Matt by emailing him at mmckillip@purdue.edu.

Matt’s entrepreneurial activities prior to academia include:

• Starting and selling an internet technology firm in Europe;
• Starting and selling a network and database technology firm in Indiana;
• Launching a successful, certified, technology park/incubator in Indiana;
• Starting Procter &Gamble’s (P&G’s) subsidiary in Portugal;
• Helping to launch TechPoint, Indiana’s initiative for building the state’s technology-based economy and measuring Indiana’s progress concerning emerging technology;
• Assisting a start-up Silicon Valley firm with the launch of its business and leading its acquisition of funds to start the company in Indiana; and
• Helping a European software firm successfully launch its healthcare business in the USA.