Jennifer Jae Gutierrez became the executive director of the Image Permanence Institute (IPI) at RIT in April 2017. IPI is an academic research laboratory, within the College of Art and Design, focused on research that supports the preservation of cultural heritage collections in libraries, archives, and museums around the world. Areas of expertise include the preservation of photographic materials and sustainable practices in preservation environmental management.

-Prior to her appointment at RIT, Jae was the Arthur J. Bell Senior Photograph Conservator at the Center for Creative Photography (CCP), University of Arizona, Tucson where she established the institution's conservation department. Jae has affiliated faculty status in the Art Conservation Department at the University of Delaware (UD) where she held a faculty appointment for eight years prior to working at the CCP. At UD, she taught undergraduate- and graduate-level courses in preventive conservation, conservation ethics, and the conservation of photographic materials. She also served as Associate Director of the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation, one of only four Master's-level, conservation-training programs in the United States. Jae is a professional associate of the American Institute for Conservation (AIC) and has a Master of Science in Art Conservation from the University of Delaware specializing in photograph conservation. Recently published essays include The Preservation of Platinum and Palladium Prints: Storage and Display (AIC, 2017), Preventing Destruction: Preserving Our Irreplaceable Photographic Heritage (Smithsonian, 2017), and Pinups, Photograms, Polaroids and Printing Plates: Iterations in Robert Heinecken's Work Process (Museum of Modern Art, 2014).