Experienced Inventor and IP Expert Joins College of Science/Tech Launch Arizona Team

Tucson, Ariz. – Tech Launch Arizona, in collaboration with the UA College of Science, has hired Laura Silva as the Licensing Manager for the college. Her responsibilities center around working with faculty, researchers and graduate students across the college to identify, protect and commercialize inventions that stem from research.

This is an essential role at the UA, says TLA Assistant Vice President Douglas Hockstad. In FY2017, the faculty and research community of the College delivered 103 of the 261 invention disclosures to TLA to evaluate for commercialization.

“With all of her experience, her understanding of commercialization, and the relationships she’s already building in the college,” he says. “We expect that she’s going to be a fantastic partner to help our faculty identify new inventions in their research and get the products of that research out into the marketplace where they can really make a difference in people’s lives.”

After Silva’s recent visit to the UA, she noted, “The UA College of Science has significant research being conducted in a wide variety of fields. There are so many opportunities here to commercialize basic science – I could see lots of ideas translating into multiple applications.”

During that visit she met with faculty and was excited to see the college’s enthusiasm for commercialization, creativity, and understanding new inventions.

“The opportunity to harvest new technologies here is very high,” she says. “But beyond the technologies themselves, I’m excited to learn everyone’s ideas, what they want out of the commercialization process and where they think their ideas can go.”

Silva joins the UA after serving as Vice President, Legal and IP at Velocys, a company she co-founded to commercialize innovative technology from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). Her experience in intellectual property and licensing spans the lifecycle of innovation: from initial concept development and protection to mature commercial offering and patent enforcement; from company start-up to executive legal and IP management of a publicly-traded company. She has negotiated and completed alliance transactions with diverse companies worldwide, ranging from Fortune 50 to small private companies in various industries, including in energy, chemicals, consumer products, construction, and manufacturing.

Prior to Velocys, she served as Commercialization Manager for Battelle Memorial Institute at PNNL. Silva has also served in various technology development and engineering roles at Chevron, PNNL, and Velocys.