Stephanie Tofighi has a Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences from the University of Nebraska and a Master of Science in Public Policy with emphases in science & technology policy, public management, and policy analytics from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Prior to joining the NM Bioscience Authority (NMBSA) as its Executive Director (ED), she worked in research development for ten years. She spent five years as a Research Operations Program Manager for two research centers in the College of Computing at Georgia Tech and another five years as a Faculty Research Support Officer in the University of New Mexico (UNM) main campus’ central Faculty Research Development Office (FRDO). In that role, she worked with faculty across campus to develop competitive grant proposals for external funding, managed the FRDO website, evaluated the effectiveness of the FRDO network, and led an NSF CAREER cohort for assistant professors interested in submitting proposals to that annual competition. 

As the ED of the NMBSA, Tofighi has been awarded a grant from the Small Business Administration’s Growth Accelerator Fund Competition that the NMBSA used to develop the Rural NM Biotech Ecosystem and the NM Bioscience Connect ecomap. In addition, she serves as the PI for the NMBSA’s state appropriation designated for programming support.  In her spare time, she enjoys reading, traveling, and spending quality time with her husband and two boys.