CSIRO appoints Dr Larry Marshall as new CEO

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) has appointed Dr Larry Marshall as its new chief executive.

Marshall will join CSIRO in January 2015. He is currently MD of Southern Cross Venture Partners, an early-stage venture capital firm specialising in creating Australian technology companies and growing them globally in Asia and the United States.

He has an impressive CV - he has a longstanding partnership with SoftBank China, China’s most successful VC firm, and co-manages the Renewable Energy Fund, founded in 2012, with them. He has lived in the US for 25 years and founded and/or was CEO of Light Solutions, Iridex (Nasdaq:IRIX), Iriderm, Lightbit, Translucent, AOC, Arasor (ASX: ARR) and the Renewable Energy Fund; driving two of them to successful IPOs.

“Dr Marshall has an impeccable record as a scientist, a technology innovator and business leader,” said the chairman of the CSIRO board, Simon McKeon.

“The chief executive of CSIRO is probably the most important position in national science administration, so we conducted an extensive global search for an innovative scientist with strong business leadership qualities, and more than 70 candidates were considered.

“The board is confident that Dr Marshall will lead CSIRO in a manner which ensures that it continues to provide advice of the highest quality to government as well as provide best practice collaboration with the private sector.”

McKeon also thanked current chief executive Dr Megan Clark for her leadership of CSIRO for the past six years. Dr Clark will leave CSIRO at the end of December this year.

Marshall was educated at Macquarie University (Sydney) where he took a doctorate in physics. He began his career in the Defence Science and Technology Organisation and has 25 years’ experience as an international technology entrepreneur and holds 20 patents protecting commercial products. He has founded six successful United States companies in biotechnology, photonics, telecommunications and semiconductors.

He began his career as an engineer with a PhD in Physics and over 100 publications and presentations; he became an inventor, with 20 patents protecting numerous commercial products generating over $200m in revenue; then became an entrepreneur, raising over $100m in funding and creating companies with over $1bn in market cap, and now an investor with $400m under management. He has served on 20 boards of high-tech companies operating in US, Australia and China.

Marshall is currently on the boards of Mocana, Quantenna, Wave, Nitero, SBA, Advance, SXVP, REVCF and Laser Focus World, and serves as chairman of  RIO, Crossfiber and Advance Innovation. He is co-chairman of Blackbird and Brismat. He is a passionate supporter of Australian innovation and Australian entrepreneurs.