Tech, enterprise offices at Pitt move toward greater integration; Departments will get single director, merge some operations

BYLINE: Jennifer Curry

For years, the University of Pittsburgh's Office of Technology Management and Office of Enterprise Development have worked separately to help companies license and commercialize technology.

Now, that's about to change.

Starting Nov. 3, the offices will share the same director -- Marc Malandro, Pitt's new associate vice chancellor for technology management and commercialization.

Since 2005, Malandro has been director of the Office of Technology Management -- a post he will continue to hold -- while also heading Pitt's Office of Enterprise Development.

Former OED head Carolyn Green left Pitt in August to help lead a Pitt spin-off, Logical Therapeutics Inc., a Mars-based developer of medicines that treat diseases associated with inflammation.

While OTM and OED will remain independent of each other, the move to have Malandro head both is designed to create more integration and coordination between the departments.

Some tasks, such as marketing, will be merged together, while the offices and employees themselves will remain separate. Eventually, he hopes the two departments will be located in the same building.

"The goal and thought behind this was to have more synergy and a more strategic focus and strategic interaction between the two offices," Malandro said. "We are building on the success of what they've had in the past, rather than recasting and re-missioning."

In the past, OTM has been primarily responsible for intellectual properties, with roles such as getting license agreements and contracts put in place. The OED has worked with health sciences professors to develop business opportunities.

The offices will continue to play these roles, but, with them working more closely together, Malandro hopes to work with professors at even earlier stages to determine whether a potential product or technology should go down the licensing route or the company route.

Faculty members who come to the offices now will be assigned a licensing manager and a business manager.

In the past, OTM usually assigned a licensing manager, while OED would offer business advice, but not assign a licensing manager.

"We want to move earlier and earlier in the innovation process," Malandro said. "Rather than sitting back and being reactive, we want to be very proactive by working with faculty at very, very early times."

Dottie Clower, vice president of business development and operations for North Side-based Cohera Medical Inc., a Pitt spin-off that worked with both offices to get running, said having the two departments work more closely together under one director will help make both more effective at commercializing technologies.

Clower said. "OTM develops intellectual property, and OED develops business opportunities," Clower said. "Those two things are integrally linked and need to progress in lock-step."

During the most recent academic year, OTM had 54 licenses or options for total revenue of $11.9 million, which was more than double the $5.7 million brought in the year before.

Malandro hopes the changes will create more high-quality companies that can then tap into the region's limited resources and become successful.

"Our startup resources (in the region) are limited," he said. "We have only so much talent, so much economic development, so much venture capital. I want to put those things on companies that have the best chance of succeeding."