Celdara Medical, LLC announced today that it has elected Lita Nelsen to its Board of Directors, and appointed her as a Member of the Company.
“Lita is trailblazer and an innovator, and sets the bar for what the interface between academia and industry can be,” said Jake Reder, Ph.D., cofounder and CEO of Celdara Medical. “Whenever someone first starts learning about technology transfer, they quickly find that all roads in some way lead to Lita and her office. Whether seeking best practices or benchmarks, she’s created the gold standard, and has improved it year after year. Given Celdara Medical’s innovative business model and our role at the academia/industry interface, she’s the perfect addition to our leadership team.”
“On behalf of the Board, we’re very happy to welcome Lita to Celdara Medical,” said Michael Fanger, Ph.D., cofounder, Chairman, and CSO. “Her wide-ranging expertise in translational research, intellectual property, and strategic alliances will both complement and augment the already considerable capabilities of this Board. We look forward to working with her at this exciting time in Celdara Medical’s development.”
Lita Nelsen, Director of MIT’s Technology Licensing Office, and Director at Celdara Medical added, “I am delighted to be part of an organization that is providing a new model for ‘bridging the gap’ between early-stage university discoveries and inventions and large-scale commercial investment, to bring cures to patients.”
Ms. Nelsen holds degrees in Chemical Engineering from MIT and graduated from the MIT Sloan School of Management as a Sloan Fellow. Prior to joining the MIT Technology Licensing Office, Ms. Nelsen spent 20 years in industry, primarily in the fields of membrane separations, medical devices, and biotechnology, at such companies as Amicon, Millipore, Arthur D. Little, Inc., and Applied Biotechnology. Ms. Nelsen was the 1992 President of the Association of University Technology Managers, serves on the Board of the State of Massachusetts Technology Development Corporation and the Massachusetts Biotechnology Corporation, and has served on the Boards of the M.I.T. Enterprise Forum, the Cornell Research Foundation and many others.
She is a cofounder of PraxisUnico and has served as advisor to the NIH, the National Academy of Sciences and the Office of Technology Assessment of the United States Congress. Ms. Nelsen is also the Intellectual Property Advisor to the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and a Member of the Order of the British Empire.
About Celdara Medical, LLC
Celdara Medical was founded by Drs. Jake Reder and Michael Fanger in 2008, and is headquartered at the Dartmouth Regional Technology Center (DRTC) in Lebanon, NH. Celdara Medical builds academic and early-stage innovations into high-potential medical companies, identifying discoveries of exceptional value at the earliest stages and moving them toward the market. Celdara Medical partners with inventors and their institutions, providing the developmental, financial, and business acumen required to bridge discovery and profitability. With robust funding options, a diverse and high impact Programmatic pipeline, and partnerships with world-class academic institutions and industry leaders, Celdara Medical navigates all aspects of a complex industry, accelerating science to improve human health.