John m. horack, phD

John M. Horack is the vice president for research at The Ohio State University where he leads the Enterprise for Research, Innovation and Knowledge (ERIK), overseeing strategic research operations, commercialization initiatives, and collaborative partnerships across the university. A 30-year veteran of the spaceflight industry, he is a globally-recognized leader in space-based research, flight hardware development, program management, and space policy in the academic, government and private sectors. His appointment aligns with Ohio State’s ambitious Education for Citizenship 2035 strategic plan, which aims to grow the university’s research enterprise to $2 billion by 2035. 

Dr. Horack is the inaugural holder of the Neil Armstrong Chair in Aerospace Policy at Ohio State, with tenured, full-professor appointments in the College of Engineering’s Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering department and the John Glenn College of Public Affairs. Prior to joining Ohio State in 2016, he served for four years as vice president of Teledyne Brown Engineering’s Space Systems group in Huntsville, Alabama, with responsibility for overseeing all government and commercial Space programs, including Science, International Space Station Payload Operations, Test Support, Flight Hardware, Launch Vehicle and Component Development, and Earth Imaging, including the deployment of the MUSES commercial imaging platform to the ISS and the installation of state-of-the-art Hyperspectral instrumentation for commercial remote sensing. 

From 2009-2012 Dr. Horack served as vice president of research for The University of Alabama in Huntsville, where he had fiscal oversight for the university’s research enterprise, including 14 research centers and laboratories. During his tenure the university grew annual research expenditures from $65M to nearly $100 million and moved from an R2 to an R1.