Executive Director - Strategic Leadership

About the role

JOB SUMMARY: The Executive Director will provide strategic leadership and operational oversight for a portfolio of healthcare and medical device cybersecurity research and translational initiatives, including a cybersecurity research program funded up to $19M for the development of a next-generation whole hospital simulator and vulnerability mitigation platform. This program will dramatically improve the capabilities of medical device manufacturers (MDMs) and healthcare delivery organizations (HDOs) to understand, plan, and deploy security upgrades to networked hospital equipment. The approach will be scalable and adaptable to diverse hospital environments through the development and dissemination of open-source tools and frameworks. These tools will enable MDMs and HDOs to proactively evaluate potential vulnerabilities and assess how corresponding security updates may impact hospital operations without risking the operational downtime that threatens continuity of patient care. The Executive Director will also help advance broader initiatives associated with Northeastern University's Archimedes Center for Healthcare and Medical Device Cybersecurity. In support of the ARPA-H UPGRADE Program, the Archimedes Center fosters collaborative engagement with hospitals, medical device manufacturers, researchers, and industry partners through translational activities, technical workshops, joint convenings, and real-world deployment efforts that support whole hospital simulators and vulnerability mitigation platforms. The Executive Director will report directly to the Principal Investigator (PI) and provide leadership across a complex multi-institutional ecosystem of sub-awardees, consultants, collaborators, and partner organizations distributed among a dozen institutions. The Executive Director will ensure strong coordination, communication, and accountability across program activities so that contractual research objectives, milestones, deliverables, and sponsor expectations are successfully achieved while maintaining alignment with the strategic vision of the PI. The Executive Director will lead an internal team of seven direct reports spanning program management, grants and operations, research, and communications, while also providing oversight across the broader multi-institutional partner network.