Dr. Cliff Zintgraff is Chief Learning Officer of the San Antonio Museum of Science and Technology (SAMSAT), a museum and STEM Center in San Antonio, Texas, USA. He assumed this role after leading a merger between SAMSAT and nonprofit SASTEMIC as its Executive Director. At SAMSAT, Dr. Zintgraff is leading education efforts, helping define strategy for a museum in partnership with Port San Antonio, the Kelly Air Force Base redevelopment board. He is building cross-sector partnerships and educational experiences that serve local and city-wide organizations, including many underserved students in the immediate area of Port San Antonio, with the aim of transforming the lives of students, families and communities by placing them on the path to STEM careers.
Previously, Dr. Zintgraff held an appointment at the IC2 Institute at The University of Texas at Austin. Around core research on inquiry learning, he led programs on entrepreneurship, technology commercialization, STEM education, and STEM education’s role in regional economic development. Across fifty international trips, he led as Principal Investigator, managed, or taught in programs in the U.S., Portugal, Colombia, India, the Czech Republic, Turkey, Hungary, Cyprus, Nepal, Taiwan, Germany, and the UK. Among these programs are the Financial Services Innovator Certification (Texas); STEAM-LABS (Medellín, Colombia); Nexus Startup Hub@American Center (Delhi, India); South Asia Connect; and the University Technology Enterprise Network (UTEN Portugal). He is lead editor of STEM in the Technopolis: The Power of STEM Education in Regional Technology Policy, published in June of 2020.
In his first career, he led software development efforts building medical imaging and secure telecommunications products, and he founded an educational technology company building STEM-focused products.
Dr. Zintgraff holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Trinity University, an M.S. in Technology Commercialization from The University of Texas at Austin, and a Ph.D. in Learning Technologies from the University of North Texas.