RUSS READ

Forsyth Technical College 
National Center for Biotechnology Workforce

Russ has worked in the bioscience industry for over thirty-five years. Formerly he was an executive with the Burroughs Wellcome and Glaxo Wellcome companies. He was heavily involved with the commercial development of antivirals like AZT and 3TC which are mainstay treatments for HIV illness. He was CEO of the Kucera Pharmaceutical Company- a start- up bio-pharmaceutical company based in Winston-Salem. He has led a national biotechnology workforce effort approaching fifteen years called the National Center for the Biotechnology Workforce (NCBW). The NCBW is based in Winston-Salem, is a part of North Carolina’s Community College System and Forsyth Technical Community College, and is a part of the college’s division of Economic and Workforce Development. The NCBW focuses on achieving best practices for bioscience workforce training with its national partners, such as the US DOL, NSF ATE, BIO and The Manufacturing Institute based in Washington, D.C. In October 2012, a twelve-member national consortium of community colleges, led by Forsyth Tech, won a $15 million US DOL Trade Adjustment Assistance grant looking at building biosciences workforce skill standards and credentials. Russ was the consortium’s Project Director from start to finish in October 2016. Russ was also the Principal Investigator for the NSF ATE Project grant named the Biosciences Industry Fellowship Program which completed 6 years. It was a unique program which gave faculty from across the nation an opportunity to experience the NC Biosciences industry during the month of June. He is the Principal Investigator for another NSF ATE Project grant called Bio Medical Emerging Technology Applications or BETA Skills, at the interface between biomedical devices and tissue engineering, and recently became a CO-PI of InnovATEBIO, an NSF ATE Biotech Education Center based out of Austin. He currently serves as a Past-Chair of the Advisory Committee for the NC Biotech Center’s Piedmont Triad regional office and is a Director of NCBIO. He also served on the National Visitor’s Committee of the NSF ATE national program called Bio-Link and to the AC2 Bio-Link Regional Center, Austin TX. He is an advisor to the NSF ATE NBC2 biomanufacturing program and is a member of the workforce committee for the National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals or NIIMBL. Russ has been twice recognized for his work by the North Carolina Biotechnology Center’s TRIAD BIONIGHT in 2007 for community support and service and in 2019 for academic excellence.