Katharine Ku

Director
Stanford University
Stanford , CA

Katharine Ku is Director of the Office of Technology Licensing (OTL) at Stanford University. OTL is responsible for the licensing of various state-of-the-art university technologies such as biotechnology and semiconductor inventions, software, medical instrumentation etc. In fiscal year 1999-2000, OTL received $36.9 Million from 378 different technologies. In addition to OTL, Ku was responsible for Stanford's Sponsored Projects Office from 1994-98. Prior to 1991, Ku was Vice President, Business Development at Protein Design Labs, Inc. a now publicly traded biotechnology company in Mountain View, California. Prior to PDL, Ku spent 12 years at Stanford in various positions, was a researcher at Monsanto and Sigma Chemical, administered a dialysis clinical trial at University of California and taught chemistry and basic engineering courses. Ku has been active in the Licensing Executive Society (LES), serving as Vice President, Western Region and Trustee of LES and various committee chairs. She also has served as President of the Association of University Technology Managers (1988-90). She recently received the AUTM Bayh-Dole Award for her efforts in university licensing. Ku has a B.S. Chemical Engineering (Cornell University), an M.S. in Chem. Eng. (Washington University) and is a registered patent agent.