For 25 years, Lita Nelsen has witnessed the spread of MIT ingenuity from a unique vantage point: the Technology Licensing Office (TLO). The TLO helps MIT researchers protect their innovations and license them to existing companies and startups; Akamai and Momenta Pharmaceuticals are two successful public companies that got their start that way. Nelsen joined the office in 1986 and became director in 1993. During her tenure, it has evolved into one of the most active such offices in the world, ushering thousands of innovations into the marketplace. Annual invention disclosures, which researchers send to the TLO describing promising new inventions, have more than quadrupled, to over 500, and licensing agreements have increased tenfold, to more than 90 annually. On average, 20 new companies are started each year.
Nelsen brings plenty of industry experience to the job: she spent 20 years working on membrane separations, medical devices, and biotechnology at companies including Amicon, Millipore, Arthur D. Little, and Applied Biotechnology. Yet none of those jobs used her skills as fully as the TLO. “Building the Technology Licensing Office has been a phenomenal privilege,” says Nelson, who earned two degrees in chemical engineering at MIT and a second master’s through the Sloan Fellows program.
Considered a leading authority on technology transfer, Nelsen has published about a dozen articles and half a dozen book chapters on the topic. She also lectures worldwide and advises numerous nonprofits on intellectual-property issues. Her cofounding of PraxisUnico, a U.K.-based technology transfer program, earned her a distinction few foreigners receive: Member of the Order of the British Empire.
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