As a Technology Licensing Associate with Princeton University’s Office of Technology Licensing team, Prabhpreet Gill protects and manages new inventions and creates commercialization pathways so that new inventions can be licensed to private entities who can further develop them into products and services for societal benefit. His work has been published in the Delaware Business Times, he won the AUTM Howard Bremer Scholar Award in 2019, he is a Certified Licensing Professional (CLP), and serves on several boards, including the New Jersey chapter of the Licensing Executive Society, the Eastern Regional Planning Committee, Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM), and the Editorial Advisory board of Elsevier’s Invention Disclosure Journal.
Gill holds a Professional Science Master’s degree in Biotechnology from the University of Delaware and a Bachelor of Engineering in Biotechnology from Manipal Institute of Technology, Manipal. Prior to joining Princeton, he served as a Licensing Associate at the University of Delaware for close to 3 years, where he worked to commercialize university research by forming successful partnerships with the private sector. There, he was part of the team that secured $200,000 proof of concept funding from the University City Science Center in Philadelphia to develop a medical device for children with cerebral palsy. This funding advanced key research and a successful startup was formed aimed at developing robotic ankle-foot orthosis for these children.
For the last 4 years, Gill has worked at Princeton University. He is responsible for managing a portfolio of technologies from various departments. He interacts with faculty members to solicit invention disclosures, conducts patentability and commercial viability assessment, interfaces with patent attorneys to obtain and protect intellectual property rights, and develops commercialization strategies to translate new technologies from the laboratory to the marketplace. In addition, Gill engages with the private sector to negotiate agreements in the process of technology transfer and works on all IP related matters for industry-sponsored research agreements.
Gill manages interactions between the internal side of the tech transfer process – the researchers – and the external stakeholders. “The two sides don’t always speak the same language, so to speak,” he says. “I’m able to serve as a liaison to connect the two aspects of technology transfer.” Gill’s role is to understand the needs and interests of all parties, find potential opportunities, and draft proof of concept proposals, and build a commercialization pathway for these technologies.
He also works to analyze new inventions that might have commercial potential, and act on them in a timely manner by securing intellectual property (IP) rights. “IP rights incentivize industry professionals to develop inventions into products and services,” he says.
When it comes to research and innovation, Prabhpreet Gill is at the heart of progress. His expertise is highly sought after in his industry, and he was recently invited to speak at the AUTM Annual Conference to discuss how feedback and metrics of industry engagement are being used by Technology Transfer Offices to better understand the needs of the market, and make informed decisions about commercialization strategies to drive success.
“For a technology transfer professional,” says Gill, “success means to be able to take an invention that is created in our institution to an industry partner that can turn it into a product or service, thereby creating an impact on our society. The impact can be in the form of a new drug that saves millions of lives, or the creation of new jobs resulting from university spinouts.” He says that his career demands an understanding of technology, its commercial potential, and the ability to weave a pathway toward its commercialization. His field stands at the intersection of science, business, and law. “The most important skill in this profession,” he says, “is to effectively manage and facilitate the transfer of cutting-edge innovations from academia to industry by creating value for all stakeholders, with the underlying mission of serving humanity.”
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prabhpreet-gill-2b0b1947/
