Mark Moran

Dr. Mark Moran is an accomplished innovation and engineering executive who is passionate about leadership, systems, innovation, technology, enterprise transformation, and learning.

Dr. Moran spent much of his professional career at John Deere, retiring in June 2024 after 26 years of service. In his time at Deere, he held operating and strategic roles of increasing responsibility within Research & Development, Advanced Marketing, Advanced Manufacturing, Enterprise Architecture, and Global IT. Among his many roles with Deere, he enjoyed the most his time as the Director of the John Deere Technology Innovation Center (JDTIC) at University of Illinois Research Park. There, he led a highly diverse group comprised of students and full-time staff focused on making customer solutions smarter using Autonomy, AI, Mobile, Cloud, and IoT to move toward plant-level agronomy, unlocking new business value for customers and new business models for Deere.

Dr. Moran’s career at John Deere started by building Deere’s Internet and Web infrastructure to enable more efficient processes for employees, dealers, and customers. As enterprise-scale Information & Communication Technology has become pervasive, he’s worked globally, spending time at engineering centers, factories, dealers, and customer locations on four continents.

 

Dr. Moran has led technology groups working across the entire lifecycle of processes, products, and systems, and has experience in a broad range of operating domains including airport infrastructure, corporate data centers, enterprise processes, factories and their associated supply chains, innovation groups, and agricultural systems.

Dr. Moran holds a BS in General Engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (1992), an MBA from the University of Iowa (2003), an SM in System Design & Management from MIT (2011), and a PhD in Informatics from Illinois (2024). He obtained his graduate degrees while working full-time in industry.

Dr. Moran enjoys working at the boundary of industry and the academy. While leading JDTIC, he developed and taught a graduate-level class on IoT Analytics for the School of Information Sciences. He has served on advisory boards for the National Academies, the National Science Foundation, and the U. of I. He has recruited and hired 100+ students, and sponsored 20+ capstone projects.

He is a frequent speaker and panelist at Illinois and other universities.
Mark, his wife Lori, and their two dogs live in Urbana. They are Fighting Illini men’s basketball fans. They have two adult daughters (both Illinois grads), a son-in-law (also an Illinois grad), two grand dogs, and a granddaughter.