Jed L Taylor

Jed L Taylor serves as Assistant Dean for Innovation & Entrepreneurship and Executive Director of the Technology Entrepreneurship Center (TEC) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign's College of Engineering. He concurrently holds the position of Clinical Professor and acts as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Enterprise Works within the Research Park, bridging academic innovation with startup ecosystem development.

His educational credentials include:

• B.S. in Computer Science from Utah State University
• M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois
• MBA from the University of Illinois

Taylor's professional focus centers on translating academic research into commercial ventures through entrepreneurship education and startup mentorship. His expertise spans technology commercialization pipelines, venture creation frameworks, and experiential engineering pedagogy that integrates business strategy with technical development. This manifests in courses emphasizing real-world project incubation and city-scale innovation challenges.

His operational footprint extends across the Coordinated Science Lab infrastructure and the Technology Entrepreneurship Center, where he cultivates partnerships between engineering researchers, business students, and regional startups. Current initiatives emphasize breakthrough project development and urban innovation ecosystems through structured scholar programs.

Taylor leverages direct industry experience from founding roles at Pattern Insight—a Computer Science Department spinout—to inform his mentorship approach. His dual-track engagement combines academic leadership in engineering entrepreneurship with hands-on venture development support at Enterprise Works, creating continuous feedback loops between classroom theory and market validation.