Panel to focus on commercializing university inventions

By Chris Emery on Feb. 12, 2010, 11:56 a.m.

Scientists, investors and legal experts will discuss their experiences bringing university scientific and engineering inventions to the commercial marketplace at a panel discussion at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 16, in the Friend Center Auditorium.  

The participants in "Technology Commercialization Panel: Taking University Inventions to Market" will include: Vivek Pai, an associate professor of computer science at Princeton who has invented and patented new technologies; Shahram Hejazi, a partner at a venture capital firm that provides funding to startup life sciences companies; Thomas McWilliams, a lawyer who specializes in intellectual property rights; Katherine O'Neill, executive director of the investment network JumpStart New Jersey Angel Network; and Laurie Tzodikov, a licensing associate in Princeton's Office of Technology Licensing.

Princeton engineering lecturer Ed Zschau, who has been an entrepreneur and a venture capital investor as well as a two-term U.S. congressman, will serve as moderator.

The event is the third in the 2009-10 Princeton Jumpstart Lecture Series on Technology Entrepreneurship, sponsored by Princeton's Keller Center for Innovation in Engineering Education and Office of Technology Licensing, the Jumpstart New Jersey Angel Network and the law firm Drinker Biddle & Reath.

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