Emily Fehrman Cory

Work Experience

In addition to being an Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) for the Entrepreneurs’ Center, Emily Fehrman Cory is the Founder of Airship Consulting LLC, where she uses her broad experience to help startup to small businesses leverage academic and government partnerships to grow their research and development programs towards commercialization and tech transfer goals.

Emily has her doctorate in Electro-Optics, with a specialization in nanofabrication of polymer photonic devices. Her technical interests include advanced manufacturing, additive manufacturing, photonics, and optics. She started her career at AFRL, where she was the chief technology advisor for America Makes, the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute. She was also a program manager in Manufacturing and Industrial Technologies, specializing in Air Force tech transfer and commercialization. Emily then went on to create the AFRL Maker Hub, the first public-private makerspace for collaborative prototyping for the Air Force, to give small businesses a physical space to co-create with Air Force researchers. After her time at AFRL, Emily spent three years as the Faculty of Practice for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Dayton School of Engineering, where she created a business incubation program that supported 11 student and faculty led startups.

Her specialties include tech transfer and commercialization, partnering with academia and government, management consulting, executive leadership and coaching, corporate strategy, and innovation techniques. Emily is a Blue Belt Certified practitioner of Innovation Engineering through Eureka! Ranch.

Emily is a Cincinnati native and lives in the Dayton area.

What do you enjoy most about being an EIR?
  • I love building partnerships and being an EIR gives me the opportunity to help new companies grow their reach and build relationships into academia and government. It also gives me the opportunity to meet creative, motivated, deep technical experts who want to use their technology to create a better future.
Education
  • University of Dayton Ph.D., Electro-Optics
  • University of Dayton M.S., Electro-Optics
  • Thomas More University B.S., Physics A.S., Mathematics
Favorite Dayton Restaurant
  • Nelly’s Taste of Bolivia (in Centerville)