Joseph Jilka has been named associate dean for research innovation and director of the Office of Technology Development at Penn State College of Medicine. Jilka will continue to work with faculty to identify intellectual property that merits patent protection and commercialization as well as develop strategies for technology commercialization and business development at Penn State Hershey.
Jilka previously worked as executive director of the Office of Technology Translation at the Texas A&M Health Science Center. He was responsible for the facilitation and promotion of an entrepreneurial and innovative culture which included the commercialization of technologies at the Health Science Center. He served as a key liaison to commercial partners, and he facilitated the integration of pre-clinical discoveries into commercially viable technologies to provide clinically useful approaches and positive outcomes to the treatment of human disease. As a member of the graduate faculty in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Medicine, he developed and taught a graduate level course on the development and commercialization of a human therapeutic.
Jilka's prior responsibilities included serving as a licensing associate in the Office of Technology Commercialization at the Texas A&M system where he was responsible for assisting in the formation of start-up companies, evaluating new technologies, developing intellectual property strategies, conducting strategic market analyses of potential markets and barriers to commercialization, and negotiating, drafting and maintaining agreements. Dr. Jilka brings expertise from the private sector, serving as president and vice president of two different start-up agricultural biotechnology companies.
He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biochemistry from Kansas State University, and his doctorate in biochemistry from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, and conducted postdoctoral research at the Monsanto Agricultural Company.
Jilka will begin in his new role in late March.