Norman Winarsky
Vice President, Ventures, Licensing, and Strategic Programs

Norman Winarsky leads SRI's Ventures, Licensing, and Strategic Programs, which includes SRI's venture and license development, SRI's Commercialization Board, and nVention—SRI's partnership with the venture capital community that develops early-stage investment opportunities. Winarsky works with SRI's business units to identify and develop SRI's highest-value commercial market opportunities from initial concept through commercialization as a license or venture.

Winarsky has helped found more than 20 ventures, has published more than 50 papers, holds two patents and one pending, and has given hundreds of invited talks, lectures, and presentation throughout the world. He is a founder of the National Information Display Laboratory (NIDL)—a center of excellence for the government in information processing and display technologies. The NIDL is known for establishing a new model for government/industry technology development and commercialization. The program grew to become the National Technology Alliance, run by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and hosted at SRI and SRI's subsidiary, Sarnoff Corporation.

Winarsky has served on numerous boards, and currently chairs SRI's Commercialization Board, its Venture Board, and is a board member of Siri, an SRI spin-off company. He is a member of the National Academy's Committee on Forecasting Future Disruptive Technologies. Winarsky also volunteers as Chairman of the University of Chicago Visiting Committee for the Physical Sciences Division. 

Winarsky joined SRI in 2001 after more than 20 years with Sarnoff Corporation—formerly the central research laboratory for RCA Corporation.  In 1987, Sarnoff became an SRI subsidiary, and in 1994 Winarsky became Vice President of the Information Technology Division. In 1998, he became Senior Vice President of Information Technology Ventures and Licenses. 

Winarsky received his B.A., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in mathematics from the University of Chicago. He graduated summa cum laude in 1969, and was awarded the Paul J. Cohen Award for the highest achieving student in the mathematics department. He was a National Science Foundation Fellow from 1969 until 1974, and an invited member of the mathematics department of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.  From 1974 to 1976, he was an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Albany. 

Winarsky and his team received an Emmy Award in 2000 from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for outstanding achievement in technological advancement "for a unique technology to predict how viewers will perceive the quality of digitally processed TV images or still pictures."  Winarsky received more than ten RCA awards, and in 1984, received RCA's highest honor, the Sarnoff Award, for "development of the physical understanding and computer software for simulating electron trajectories in picture tubes." 

He is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Phi Beta Kappa, and Sigma Xi. Winarsky enjoys boating and hiking as his primary hobbies.