Faculty & Staff

Director

Dirk Libaers, PhD
Director, Nault Center for Entrepreneurship, John & Beverley Grant Endowed Chair in Entrepreneurship, Associate Professor in Entrepreneurship & Innovation

Dirk Libaers is the director of the University of South Florida's interdisciplinary Nault Center for Entrepreneurship.  He directs the university-wide undergraduate and graduate interdisciplinary programs in entrepreneurship, the USF Graduate Certificate in Entrepreneurship and the Master of Science in Entrepreneurship in Applied Technologies and graduate training programs in entrepreneurship for business, engineering, medical and sustainability students. He also serves as the faculty director for the USF Student Innovation Incubator.

Libaers teaching activities are focused on technology-based entrepreneurship, corporate entrepreneurship, creativity & design and strategic entrepreneurship. He is also actively involved in leading study abroad programs to Ireland, Italy and Spain. Before joining USF, Libaers was an Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship & Innovation at the D’Amore McKim School of Business, Northeastern University in Boston, MA. Prior to serving on the faculty at Northeastern University, he was Associate and Assistant Professor at the Regnier Institute of Entrepreneurship & Innovation at the University of Missouri, Kansas City.

His research interests are focused on academic entrepreneurship, new product/service development in large, small and new firms, the role of top management teams (TMT) in crafting innovation strategies and the governance of R&D activities. His research efforts have yielded over 22 peer-reviewed publications, more than 50 conference presentations, and 3 book chapters and an edited volume on technology transfer.

Furthermore, he is currently a Visiting Professor of Entrepreneurship at the School of Business at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. In the past, he held visiting professorships at the Universities of Sussex and Kent in the United Kingdom and the University of Queensland in Australia.

Libaers earned a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium), a master's degree in Technology & Innovation Management from the University of Sussex in the UK, an MBA in Finance from the George Washington University and a PhD from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He also completed a certificate in lean startup techniques from the University of California, Berkeley.