Gerald (Jerry) C. Blazey graduated from South Dakota State University in 1979 with degrees in mathematics and physics and received his doctoral degree in experimental particle physics from the University of Minnesota in 1986. He is an author on 650 papers and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society. Since joining Northern Illinois University in 1996 he has been appointed a Distinguished Research Professor and Director of the Northern Illinois Center for Accelerator and Detector Development and has been a principle investigator for federally funded grants from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, the Department of Education, and the Department of Defense. Dr. Blazey has extensive experience in scientific administration and policy. While participating in the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory collider program, he served from 2002 to 2006 as co-Spokesperson of the DZero collaboration comprised of more than 600 physicists from over 20 countries. From 2007 to 2010 he was the Program Manager for the International Linear Collider in the Office of High Energy Physics at the Department of Energy. From 2011 to 2014 he served as Assistant Director for Physical Sciences in the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President of the United States where he worked on numerous issues including helium supply, space weather resiliency, exascale computing, and quantum science. From 2015 to 2023 he served as the Vice President for Research and Innovative Partnerships at Northern Illinois University.