Lisa Dhar is the Associate Vice President for Innovation and New Ventures and oversees Northwestern's Innovation and New Ventures Office (INVO) which includes The Garage and The Querrey InQbation Lab. Previously at INVO she was the Director of New Business Ventures and the Interim Executive Director of the Querrey InQbation Lab. INVO supports the translation of Northwestern innovations to the public and the development of the next generation of entrepreneurs. In addition to her work at INVO, she has taught in the McCormick School of Engineering and Kellogg School of Management.
Prior to joining Northwestern in 2016, Dhar held various leadership roles in the Office of Technology Management at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) from 2009. Earlier in her career, she was co-founder and vice president of media development for InPhase Technologies, a Bell Labs/Lucent Technologies startup that raised more than $90 million in total funding. There, she led a team of chemical engineers, chemists and optical engineers to commercialize high-performance recording media for holographic data storage. Dhar has been awarded nearly a dozen patents, has coedited a book on holographic data storage and has authored or coauthored more than 25 journal articles. Dhar earned her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from University of Chicago and her doctorate degree in physical chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.