Bobby Reed · Program Builder & Ecosystem Leader
I build programs that outlast me. I led a twenty-person emerging-technologies department at a major research university, stewarded federal grants from IMLS, NSF, and NEH, co-founded an Oklahoma technology company serving public and private clients, and hold two U.S. patents from COVID-era medical device work. Strategy and operations are not separate jobs to me -- they are the same job done honestly.
Team led at OU Libraries
Federal funders (IMLS, NSF, NEH)
Applications shipped under my leadership
U.S. patents (COVID-era medical devices)
Every organization I have led sat at an intersection -- between researchers and technologists, between institutions and the public, between a grant narrative and the thing that actually gets built. The director's job at an intersection is translation: making sure the engineer, the funder, the partner institution, and the person the work serves are all talking about the same project.
At the University of Oklahoma Libraries I took over an established emerging-technologies program and expanded it -- new locations, a team that grew to roughly twenty, federal grants, peer-reviewed publications, and a national profile. Since then I have run my own Oklahoma company, taught the next generation of software engineers, and stayed close enough to the tools to still build with them. I lead from in front of the whiteboard, not behind a closed door.
Took an established program and scaled it to national prominence -- strategy set against measurable outputs: grants won, work published, products shipped.
Hired and developed librarians, a developer, and fifteen student workers. Alumni of my teams now work in data science, software, and 3D technology across the country.
Authored technical narratives and managed budgets and reporting for IMLS, NSF, and NEH awards -- public money handled with public accountability.
Built working partnerships across universities, public libraries, museums, tribal nations, and private companies -- the full span of Oklahoma's institutional landscape.
Co-founder of DEV Limited, an Oklahoma LLC delivering prototypes and proofs-of-concept in VR, AR, web, and AI for institutional and commercial clients.
FERPA and HIPAA compliance lead; federal grant data stewardship; SOX and PCI experience from enterprise IT. Comfortable being audited.
A career of building and running technology programs -- in a research university, in a startup, and in the classroom.
Work that shows the full arc -- from idea, to funding, to build, to public outcome.
When the pandemic broke supply chains, my team moved from research support to production: the Renegade Respirator and a nasopharyngeal swab design, both patented, both born from rapid prototyping under real constraints. The closest thing to a masterclass in idea-to-impact I have ever been part of.
IMLS-funded 3D scanning to digitize artifact collections for the Delaware Nation -- cultural preservation and educational access. Served as Co-Investigator from grant narrative through technical execution: the whole pipeline, not one stage of it.
A networked VR classroom letting up to twenty researchers at different campuses examine the same 3D artifact together. Six published articles, national press, and later use in an NSF CAREER biochemistry capstone.
Commissioned by the Metropolitan Library System and delivered through DEV Limited: a VR and browser recreation of Oklahoma City's historically Black Fairgrounds District, built from archival photographs and oral histories -- a public institution buying serious technology work from an Oklahoma small business.
Revised 3D printing operations at OU's makerspaces and built a new satellite lab, with documentation-and-shadowing training that turned five student workers into workflow owners. Most still use 3D technology professionally today.
After a cyberattack corrupted the student newspaper's database, led the recovery of 1.4 GB of institutional record -- over 10,000 pages -- combining open-source tooling with custom Python pipelines, and stood up a new CMS with student helpers while being transparent about what could not be saved.
COVID-era medical devices
2020–2021
Association of College & Research Libraries
2019
Oklahoma Library Association
2019
OU Library School Accreditation
2022
University of Oklahoma · 2019
University of Central Oklahoma · 2014
University of Central Oklahoma · 2010
If you are looking for a leader who can set strategy, run the operation, and still sit down with the technical team and contribute -- someone who has built programs with public money and built products with his own -- I would welcome the conversation.