Dr. Howard Grimes
Dr. Howard Grimes is CEO of the Cybersecurity Manufacturing Innovation Institute (CyManII), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)-funded institute advancing resilient cyber assurance for America’s critical infrastructure, manufacturing and critical minerals sectors.
He leads a national team of more than 300 scientists and engineers from academia, DOE national laboratories and private industry to design, build and deploy secure, defensible architectures powered by formal methods and artificial intelligence (AI). These efforts strengthen cybersecurity while improving productivity.
One of CyManII’s flagship initiatives, the Cyber Physical Passport, integrates AI-driven analytics, formal methods and cyber-informed engineering into system design, building on the vision Grimes outlined with Dr. Tom Kurfess in The Role of the Digital Thread for Security, Resilience, and Adaptability in Manufacturing, published in The Bridge by the National Academy of Engineering in 2021.
Grimes began his career as a plant biologist, studying carbon and nitrogen metabolism in plants. His research led to several significant discoveries, including the mechanism behind non-Michaelis-Menten sucrose uptake in plant cells, the role of lipoxygenases as nitrogen-storage proteins during vegetative growth and seed development, the first functional evidence linking lipoxygenases to a specific plant cell type (the paraveinal mesophyll), the discovery that plant vacuoles transition between lytic and storage functions through Tonoplast Intrinsic Proteins (TIPs), and the first X-ray crystallographic structure of plant lipoxygenases. In recognition of these contributions, he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
After transitioning into research administration, Grimes focused on international intellectual property management, developing new approaches to patent pooling that accelerated technology transfer to developing nations. His work in agricultural intellectual property evolved into pharmaceutical collaborations that helped inform medical patent pools used to expand access to HIV medications across Africa.
Grimes spent more than 20 years on the faculty at Washington State University, where he served as Vice President for Research and Dean of the Graduate School. During his tenure, the university’s research portfolio grew from approximately $120 million to more than $500 million in less than five years, while Ph.D. graduation rates increased more than fivefold. He later served as Director for Innovation and Industry Partnerships at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory before joining UT San Antonio. As principal investigator on a major DOE award, Grimes helped establish CyManII and continues to lead the institute’s mission to strengthen the cybersecurity of U.S. manufacturing.
