Damon Tull

Damon Tull is the director for industry alliances at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management and the Mike and Renee Child Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. His research interests include U.S. global competitiveness and the financial and human capital flows of our national innovation ecosystems.

Tull works with companies, charitable organizations, national education stakeholders and federal government sponsors to form strategic partnerships that accelerate and broaden participation in innovation and entrepreneurship at both UC Davis and nationally. He has worked with research-oriented small businesses, university faculty, researchers and founders to advance their projects. He is an invited speaker on equity and inclusion issues in entrepreneurship, societal impacts of technology and research infrastructures.

Tull is an inventor, entrepreneur and former engineering professor with dozens of peer-reviewed publications and technical contributions and 11 domestic and international patents in digital imaging and computational vision. He has served as a consultant to research-oriented federal agencies such as the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command (RDECOM), now known as the Army Futures Command. He has founded both high-tech and community-based ventures.

Prior to joining UC Davis, Tull held multiple leadership positions at the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) in Washington, D.C. In these roles, he oversaw ASEE’s portfolio of federal fellowship programs; developed new sponsored programs and partnerships with federal agencies; served as the principal investigator on multiple national programs; and created a national industrial postdoctoral program for underrepresented STEM doctoral degree recipients. In support of future U.S. workforce needs, he convened national stakeholders in science and engineering research to address the impediments to research faced by faculty at small and medium colleges and minority-serving institutions, including Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) and Tribal Colleges and Universities. Tull has also served in various faculty roles at Johns Hopkins University, Washington Bible College / Capital Bible Seminary and the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Tull holds a bachelor of science in electrical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Troy, N.Y.) and a master of science and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Northwestern University, (Evanston, Ill.). He is also a member of the Screen Actors Guild.

When he is not thinking about pathways to broaden participation in research and entrepreneurship, he enjoys cooking, weight training and international travel with his wife, Renetta.