Merrilea Mayo

Merrilea Mayo, Ph.D., is the founder of Mayo Enterprises, LLC, a consultancy in the areas of innovation, workforce, technology and the future of learning. Her recent work has included projects for NASA’s Office of the Administrator, and the Kellogg Foundation. Previously, Dr. Mayo was a Director of Future of Learning Initiatives at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. Her portfolio there included video-game-based learning, educational virtual worlds, and cell-phone-delivered learning. From 2001–2006, Dr. Mayo was Director of the Government-University-Industry Roundtable (GUIRR) of the National Academies. GUIRR focused on trisector issues such the science and engineering workforce, intellectual property rights, the impacts of globalization on national competitiveness, STEM education, deemed exports regulations, and national-laboratory university collaborations.

Dr. Mayo’s career also includes two years at Sandia National Laboratories, eleven years on the faculty of Pennsylvania State University, and a founding role in both ASTRA (an advocacy organization for the physical sciences) and the University-Industry Demonstration Partnership (an organization devoted to improving the ability of companies and universities to conduct joint research). Dr. Mayo is a materials scientist and engineer by training, having received her doctorate in that field from Stanford University in 1988, publishing approximately 80 technical articles, and serving as the Materials Research Society’s President in 2003.