Brizzard moves on from IU’s ICO

Bill Brizzard (pictured), executive director of Indiana University’s Innovation and Commercialization Office (ICO), is to leave his position on May 31 to pursue fresh opportunities from his new base in St Louis.
ICO has appointed Karen White, research development and commercialisation facilitator for collaborative academic campus Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), as acting executive director while a permanent successor to Brizzard is found.
White’s duties at IUPUI include oversight of a number of entrepreneurship and innovation programs, as well as tech transfer resources for IUPUI faculty such as the Forces grant funding program.
She said: “Indiana University is in a strong position regarding innovation and commercialisation. I am honoured to fill this interim position and look forward to building on the excellent relationships the ICO office has created with university faculty and staff.”
Bill Brizzard first joined IU’s tech transfer operation in 2005 when it was part of Indiana University’s external fund management division, IU Research and Technology Corp (IURTC).
He initially served as IURTC’s director of technology commercialisation and lead liaison for technologies from the IU Bloomington campus, before moving up to become executive director of ICO in a 2017 restructuring that reassigned the newly-founded unit IU’s tech transfer function.
Brizzard was credited with driving ICO’s relationships with several successful spinouts, including biopharmaceuticals developers Marcadia Biotech and Calibrium, which were purchased by drug firms Roche and Novo Nordisk in 2010 and 2015 respectively.
Prior to joining IU, Brizzard spent six years as a business development manager with chemicals and life sciences business Sigma-Aldrich, part of pharmaceutical company Merck Group, following a decade-long spell as senior research scientist at imaging technology group Eastman Kodak’s molecular systems division from 1989 until 1999.
Simon Atkinson, associate vice-president for research at IU and vice-chancellor for research at IUPUI, said: “Bill has been instrumental in the very productive activities of our ICO.
“Under his influence, the ICO staff has achieved great successes in connecting research and discoveries to companies and startups, which in turn helps elevate the university’s standing as one of the world’s preeminent research institutions.
“Over his 14 years of working with IU inventors, Bill has managed some of the most complex and important technology portfolios ever to come out of the university with great skill.”
– Photograph courtesy of Liz Kaye at Indiana University