Gerald Blazey

Gerald Blazey, Ph.D., is Vice President for Research and Innovation Partnerships at Northern Illinois University. He joined the iFiber Board of Directors in 2022. At NIU, he oversees research endeavors and plays a crucial role advancing the mission of the university by supporting individual researchers and building teams and collaborations across units and with other institutions.

A scientist specializing in high energy particle physics, Dr. Blazey took on his current role in May 2015. From 2011-2014, he served as a senior policy advisor at the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the U.S. President, where he was involved with the development of President Obama’s budgets for the National Science Foundation and U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). During the previous four years, he worked with the DOE Office of Science, where he served as program manager of the International Linear Collider Program.

Prior to his intergovernmental personnel assignments in Washington, D.C., Dr. Blazey had a distinguished career at NIU. He joined the faculty in 1996 after working at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Batavia. At NIU, he helped establish and has served as co-director of the Northern Illinois Center for Accelerator and Detector Development.

In 2000, Blazey was awarded NIU’s Presidential Research Professorship, the university’s highest honor for outstanding research. He later was named NIU presidential science advisor, a position charged with assisting university leadership in the development of scientific initiatives and coordinating the university’s work with federal laboratories.

Outside the university, Blazey has served two terms as elected co-spokesperson for Fermilab’s international DZero collaboration, among the world’s premier experiments in particle physics.