The Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation has named Hemangi Pakala, Ph.D., as director of the foundation’s Office of Technology Ventures.
Technology Ventures promotes promising OMRF lab discoveries to biotech and pharmaceutical companies and then coordinates the resulting licensing agreements and patent applications. This arrangement has been instrumental in the development of three FDA-approved drugs, two diagnostic tests and numerous start-up companies.
Pakala, a registered patent agent, most recently served as assistant director of Technology Ventures. In that role, she managed OMRF’s portfolio of more than 200 active patents. Pakala also drafted and processed licensing agreements for potential pharmaceutical products made possible by OMRF discoveries.
A native of Mumbai, India, Pakala moved to Oklahoma in 2006 and obtained her doctorate from the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. She served as a postdoctoral researcher in an OMRF lab from 2012 to 2013 and for a spinoff company developing an OMRF technology from 2013 to 2017. She then worked as a staff scientist at OUHSC from 2017 until 2020, when she joined OMRF’s Technology Ventures team.
Pakala replaces Andrew Westmuckett, Ph.D., who recently retired after more than two decades at OMRF.
“For modern medical research institutions, an office like Technology Ventures is indispensable,” said OMRF President Andrew Weyrich, Ph.D. “Dr. Pakala has served as a fantastic liaison between our scientists and the pharmaceutical and biotech industries. She will propel our efforts to see potentially life-saving lab discoveries advance into real-world therapeutics.”
