Donald Sebastian

Dr. Donald H. Sebastian is the President & Chief Executive Officer of the New Jersey Innovation Institute (NJII) and Senior Vice President of Technology & Business Development at New Jersey Institute of Technology. NJII is an NJIT 5.01c3 Corporation that is a new model for business innovation serving key industrial clusters that anchor the state and national economy. In just its first year of operation, NJII has launched over $15M in new programs over a base of $60M in activities formerly organizes under NJIT. Prior to that appointment in 2014 NJIT’s sponsored research had more than doubled to $110M under his leadership.

Recently, Dr. Sebastian led the effort to form a statewide Health Information Technology Extension Center, now funded with $25M in federal funding to assist NJ primary care physicians in adopting electronic health record systems. NJ-HITEC leads the nation in physicians reaching meaningful use certification having enrolled over 7000 primary care physicians. Previously, he launched the NJ Homeland Security Technology Systems Center in 2004 to develop, validate and standardize new technologies for sustainable approaches to defending against terrorism. He was the principal academic organizer of the New Jersey Nanotechnology Consortium. In 1996 he created the NIST funded NJ Manufacturing Extension Program that has since documented over $2B ROI for the state’s small to medium sized manufacturers.

Dr. Sebastian is an Executive Board Member and past Chairman of the R&D Council of New Jersey, is Research Chair and Executive Board Member of the Henry H. Kessler Foundation, Treasurer and Executive Board Member of the Greater Newark Healthcare Coalition, and serves on the Executive Committee of Innovation New Jersey, the Boards the Polymer Processing Institute, Inc., NJMEP and the Newark Innovation Zone. For these and other efforts he was inducted in the New Jersey High-Tech Hall of Fame in 2006 and named an NJBIZ Healthcare Innovation Hero in 2015.

Professor Sebastian received his Bachelor of Engineering at Stevens, graduating as valedictorian of the class of 1974, followed by Masters of Engineering in 1975, and the Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering in 1977.