Successful Corporate Engagement is a Team Effort

By Luke Thorstenson At the Institute for NanoBioTechnology (INBT) we take great pride in our multidisciplinary approach to research. We bring together not only faculty from different departments within the Whiting School of Engineering (WSE), but also faculty from across the greater Johns Hopkins University (JHU) ecosystem and external partners in academia, national labs, agencies, and industry. As the Director of Corporate Partnerships for the INBT, it is my responsibility to facilitate and manage corporate interactions for the institute and our faculty. Our goal is to bring in new corporate partners and push for the translation of our scientific discoveries. For example, the INBT has longstanding partnerships with Applied Materials and Astra Zeneca, but we have many ongoing corporate research projects with companies ranging from the energy sector like ExxonMobil, to large pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer, and fast-growing biotech companies like bluebird bio. To build these partnerships, we coordinate and work with support services across JHU. There are many different avenues for potential industry partners to engage with JHU. Therefore, it is critical that we coordinate our simultaneous efforts in a streamlined cross-functional way to make sure JHU provides potential partners with the most relevant, ongoing research to achieve their goals. Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures (JHTV) is the division within JHU responsible for all intellectual property issues, from managing invention disclosures to patent filing and maintenance. They also have a corporate partnership team, and my colleague, Seth Zonies, Director of Business Development for WSE, and I act as liaisons from WSE to the JHTV corporate partnership team. Another exciting new area of coordination is with their life science development team (see Q&A with new Director, Patrick Ho). Corporate sponsored research projects come in all shapes and sizes and can cost anywhere from $10,000 to over $100 million. Industry liaisons like myself, Zonies, and the JHTV corporate partnership team speak to companies often where we present high level overviews of the different types of research activities at JHU. Our goals from these initial discussions are to get potentially interested industry representatives to visit our Baltimore campus to see