Dr. Samir Iqbal is a Program Director for the SBIR/STTR and the Partnerships for Innovation (PFI) programs. Samir is also a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV), a Minority-Serving Institution. He also had appointments in UTRGV medical school and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. Prior to joining UTRGV, Samir spun off two companies from his NSF-funded research at the University of Texas at Arlington. Samir has also served as a mentor for several startups, bringing together academics and industrial partners. He was instrumental in developing programs that provided meaningful research and education experiences in STEM areas to women and students from underrepresented backgrounds. His research has focused on cancer nanotechnology, nano-bio interfaces, and novel measurement techniques for single molecule and single cell analysis. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. He was a Presidential Fellow at UT-Arlington in 2017, a Distinguished Lecturer for IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society and Nanotechnology Council for many years and was Chair of the Bioengineering of the Biophysical Society in 2021. Samir earned his Ph.D. from Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Purdue University.