ITI Life Sciences, part of the publicly-funded innovation body set up by Scottish Enterprise, yesterday announced the appointment of Dr Ford Kennedy to the newly-created position of director of commercialisation.
The Dundee-based body said Kennedy's role will be to identify commercial opportunities and secure licences for new technologies and intellectual property resulting from the ITI research programmes that are approaching completion in 2008 and beyond.
ITI said that Scotland-born Kennedy had "extensive commercial experience in the bioscience industry from a career in business development, sales and marketing and technology commercialisation spanning 22 years".
Most recently, Kennedy was director of scientific sourcing and new technologies at NYSE-listed Millipore, a global life science organisation that provides technology biopharmaceutical manufacturing and research.
In a statement, an ITI spokesman said: "The role is new, created because several of the ITI Life Sciences research programmes are due to complete over the next few months, so there is a need to begin looking at how to commercialise the results of the programmes - options include outlicensing the technologies to other companies or formation of new companies in Scotland potentially."
These first ITI research programmes were established in 2005, with funding from ITI Life Sciences, to develop new technologies in commercially attractive areas, such as diagnostics and drug discovery and development, which are predicted to become increasingly important to the life sciences sector.
By creating successful research programmes that capitalise on the scientific excellence in Scotland combined with that of international commercial partners, ITI Life Sciences aims to position Scotland as a world-class location for life sciences research and development and to promote growth of the Scottish life sciences sector.
The spokesman for the group declined to disclose Kennedy's salary.
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