Staff Spotlight: David Wyrick
For more than two decades, David Wyrick has focused on a single, persistent challenge: how to ensure that strong research doesn’t stop at publication—but becomes something people actually use.
“I’ve spent most of my career working in applied research,” Wyrick said. “What has always mattered to me is translation—building the pathways that help good ideas turn into real-world programs, tools, and outcomes.”
Before joining NCInnovation, Wyrick spent 20 years at UNC Greensboro as a Professor of Public Health Education, where applied research anchored his work. In 2006, he founded Prevention Strategies, a UNCG spinout company designed to move evidence-based research into practice. He later launched the UNCG Center for Athlete Well-Being in 2013, further deepening his focus on implementation, partnerships, and impact.
Both initiatives shared a common throughline: building teams, structures, and partnerships that move research beyond theory. “Those experiences allowed me to focus on what happens after discovery,” he said. “How research becomes usable, scalable, and meaningful.”
That focus ultimately led Wyrick to NCInnovation.
“NCInnovation operates in what I call the critical middle,” he explained. “It’s the space where promising applied research often stalls—after early results, before outside investment or large-scale adoption. Helping teams cross that gap is how potential turns into real benefit: new products, better services, stronger communities, and jobs.”
Today, as Vice President for Hubs and Regional Networks, Wyrick works across the state to strengthen the connective tissue between universities, researchers, industry partners, and communities. His day-to-day work centers on alignment—helping people come together around shared opportunities, removing barriers, and accelerating progress from idea to action.
“My role is really about building pathways,” he said. “Bringing the right people together at the right time, creating clarity around next steps, and helping research move faster and more effectively toward real-world use.”
Wyrick brings a distinctive skill set to that work: the ability to bridge academic and applied cultures, build executable programs, and lead through long-term, trust-based relationships. “Strong partnerships depend on clarity, reliability, and follow-through,” he said. “That’s how momentum is built.”
Across the UNC System, he works closely with campus leadership, research and commercialization teams, and external partners—ensuring projects are not only innovative, but also ready to engage with markets, adopters, and implementers.
“The most meaningful part of my role is helping teams move from ‘interesting’ to ‘impactful,’” Wyrick said. “When a research team gains momentum, finds the right partners, and starts making measurable progress toward real-world use—that’s the payoff.”
At a statewide level, Wyrick sees his work as essential to scaling what works. By strengthening consistency, connectivity, and shared approaches across regions and sectors, NCInnovation can help North Carolina’s public universities punch above their weight—accelerating applied research and building a more connected innovation ecosystem.
Looking ahead, Wyrick hopes NCInnovation will be known nationally as a model for how states convert university innovation into broad-based economic growth.
“Not just as a funder,” he said, “but as a trusted builder of an innovation engine—one that moves discovery into practice at scale, with rigor and results.”
