Chris Bobko

Chris Bobko, Ph.D., is executive director of the Zahn Innovation Center at the City College of New York, which teaches students about entrepreneurship and supports their startups with funding, mentorship, legal services and prototyping facilities such as 3D printing and laser cutting. He develops and manages the relationships among stakeholders on campus, locally and globally that keep the center's programs growing. He joined in November 2021.

Before that he was chief engineering officer at Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HyperloopTT). He first contributed to the company while still a professor, then left academia to work on it full time, joining as a senior engineering specialist and manager and later serving as head of engineering integration, overseeing research, development and engineering teams developing infrastructure, power, capsule, propulsion and levitation, and control systems. He grew the engineering team from two contractors to twelve full-time employees and recruited more than 100 engineering contractors internationally. Earlier he was a tenured associate professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering at North Carolina State University, where he built an externally funded research program on more sustainable civil engineering materials. He is a graduate of Princeton and holds a master's degree and Ph.D. in civil and environmental engineering from MIT.