Aditi P. Martin, Ph.D., will lead a new office in OHSU Research & Innovation called OHSU Collaborations and Entrepreneurship.

Since 2015, Martin has played a leading role in building OHSU partnerships and developing businesses based on OHSU research. She helped drive OHSU’s partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and supported the development of drugs and medical devices as leader of the Biomedical Innovation Program.

Now, as senior director of Collaborations and Entrepreneurship, she will hold a position specifically designed to encourage the development of OHSU innovations.

“World-leading research is fundamental to OHSU and its mission,” said Martin. “So, too, is making a difference to local and global health, well-being and a regional economy.”

A focus of Collaborations and Entrepreneurship will be to advance research conducted at OHSU to benefit the public. Martin will work as the central point of contact for industry and non-industry external partners, as well as OHSU researchers who wish to develop collaborations or build start-ups. The office will coordinate business development activities that are spread around OHSU, allowing potential partners to more easily connect with the right OHSU units. This office will also provide access to entrepreneurial education to support our growing innovation community.

At OHSU, Martin has contributed to strategic partnerships and business development with the OHSU School of Medicine and the Oregon Clinical and Translational Research Institute.

In her new role, Martin will provide business support and advising to researcher-entrepreneurs, and will continue to direct the Biomedical Innovation Program and the Innovation Program and Pilot Awards group at OCTRI. The Biomedical Innovation Program cultivates, evaluates and funds promising translational projects to move innovative technologies to clinical application through commercialization.

The Biomedical Innovation Program has supported projects that included developing a pediatric rapid dehydration test with device maker Hill-Rom and the Department of Emergency Medicine. In the new drug discovery track, Martin supported researchers from the Department of Molecular and Medical Genetics in launching a non-profit to bring a new drug to patients at the lowest cost possible. The goal of this non-profit is to accelerate development and commercialization of a compound that may change the course of a life-threatening metabolic disease called pantothenate kinase-associated neurodegeneration, for which there currently is no treatment.

The Awards team at OCTRI partners with Business Oregon to help businesses prepare strong grant proposals for the highly competitive federal Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) funding. . This program substantially increases an application’s chance of success.

At the School of Medicine, Martin led the strategic partnerships team, cultivating relationships and strategic alliances with diverse stakeholders from government, business and the community. She served as co-director for the OHSU-Pacific Northwest National Laboratory partnership  Precision Medicine Innovation Co-Laboratory, or PMedIC. PMedIC projects contributed to the NIH-funded Pacific Northwest Center for Cryo-EM, as well as numerous joint faculty appointments, publications and grants at both institutions. The relationship with PNNL will continue to be managed by the School of Medicine, and its strategic alliances team will closely collaborate with the new OHSU Collaborations and Entrepreneurship team.

Collaborations and Entrepreneurship will maintain close ties to OHSU Technology Transfer, led by Andrew Watson. Technology Transfer will continue to help inventors and entrepreneurs identify, protect and commercialize their discoveries and technologies.

Martin came to OHSU from Johns Hopkins University’s Office of Technology Ventures, where she managed intellectual property and led the negotiation and execution of technology development and collaborative agreements focused on translation of biomedical advances, including biomarkers for various cancers. Before joining John Hopkins, she earned her doctorate in pharmacology and toxicology from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia.

Outside of OHSU, Martin is active in the Portland-area business community, including the innovation network across the Northwest, and frequently is invited to contribute to events and competitions, such as serving as a judge at the University of Oregon’s New Venture Championship. She received the 2018 Portland Business Journal’s Forty under 40 award for her accomplishments fostering collaboration and advancing OHSU discoveries.