Vellequette to lead tech transfer at two campuses

MaryBeth Vellequette  has been appointed the tech transfer director for the University of Colorado’s Boulder and Colorado Springs campuses. Vellequette joined the CU Tech Transfer Office’s Boulder licensing group in 2009 and is an experienced patent agent, having worked at both OmniVision Technologies and local law firm Greenlee, Winner & Sullivan. She also served as vice president of R&D for startup diagnostics company DDx Inc. Vellequette has an undergraduate degree in chemistry from Mount Holyoke College, and a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Stanford University.

Following the retirement of TTO operations director Kathe Zaslow, several experienced staff members will perform operations functions at the CU system level, reporting directly to TTO's interim associate vice president. Zaslow played a key role in reviewing more than 800 IP service agreements per year, the majority of which were biological material transfer agreements (MTAs). Amanda Hitchell has been hired as contract support specialist to handle MTAs for all CU campuses; she will also negotiate confidentiality agreements and IP terms in sponsored research agreements and consulting agreements for CU Denver|Anschutz Medical Campus researchers. For CU-Boulder and UCCS, Frank Robison has joined University Counsel to support the review of IP terms in sponsored research agreements as well as review of license agreements and other IP agreements.