Register here: Alumni Career Chat Registration
Alumni Career Chats provide a unique opportunity to connect with Chemistry at Illinois alumni in an informal, interactive setting. Unlike a traditional lecture, Alumni Career Chats are more evenly divided between presentation and Q&A/conversation. Coffee and cookies provided.
Justin Gallivan (BS, '94)
Senior Program Director
W. M. Keck Foundation
This career chat is open to all graduate students, undergraduate students, and postdocs.
That Was Unexpected: How a Dream Job Evolved Into Much More
As an undergraduate student, Chemistry at Illinois alum Justin Gallivan (BS, ’94) charted a traditional linear career path to a professorship. After receiving tenure, he started taking risks that led him in new directions that included military research and philanthropy. In this talk and Q&A, he will discuss how his scientific thinking evolved, how it altered his life’s journey, and his observations about having an impactful and satisfying career.
Bio
Justin Gallivan joined the W.M. Keck Foundation as a Senior Program Director in January 2022. Prior to joining the Foundation, Justin was the Senior Scientist for Systems and Synthetic Biology at the Air Force Research Laboratory where he oversaw the Air Force’s biotechnology portfolio. Justin has served as a Program Manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), where he conceived and managed a research portfolio of over $100M that focused on synthetic biology, microbiome engineering, and living materials. He also held a tenured professorship in the Department of Chemistry at Emory University. Justin earned a PhD in chemistry from Caltech, where he also performed postdoctoral studies, and a BS in chemistry from the University of Illinois. He has been named a Beckman Young Investigator, a Fellow of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar.
