Ben Schrag joined the U.S. National Science Foundation as an SBIR/STTR program director in 2009. Ben has worked across several portfolio areas including advanced materials, instrumentation and hardware, and advanced manufacturing. He became the policy liaison for the SBIR/STTR programs in 2016. Ben is a two-time winner of the NSF Director's Award. Prior to NSF, he was the director of research and development at Micro Magnetics, where he led a development effort to commercialize a new magnetic imaging tool for semiconductor metrology. During this time, he also served as a visiting scientist at Brown University. Ben received his doctorate in physics from Brown University.