Dr. Jo Handelsman is the Director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a Vilas Research Professor, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor. She previously served as a science advisor to President Barack Obama as the Associate Director for Science at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) where she served for three years until January 2017, and was on the faculty at the University of Wisconsin and Yale University before that. She received her Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in Molecular Biology and has since authored over 200 scientific research publications, 30 editorials, and 29 essays. She is responsible for groundbreaking studies in microbial communication and metagenomics. She is also widely recognized for her contributions to science education and diversity in science. She has authored numerous articles about classroom methods and mentoring and she is co-author of six books about teaching, including Entering Mentoring and Scientific Teaching. She received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring from President Obama in 2011 and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019. In 2023 she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, one of the highest honors that a scientist can receive.

John Wiley served as the interim director of WID from 2008 to 2011, leading the public half of the public-private partnership in the Discovery Building. A research physicist by training, Wiley’s academic work has focused on research in semiconductors and solid state physics. He received his bachelor’s degree in physics from Indiana University in 1964, and master’s and doctoral degrees in physics in 1965 and 1968 from UW–Madison on a National Science Foundation Fellowship. He returned to UW–Madison as a faculty member in the College of Engineering in 1975, after having worked with Bell Telephone Laboratories and at the Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart, Germany as an awardee of the Alexander von Humboldt Senior U.S. Service Award for Research and Training.

His tenure as Chancellor was distinguished by record-breaking fund-raising efforts and a strong emphasis on strategic planning. Wiley attracted alumni and institutional investment to several projects on campus, most notably the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery.