Linden Rhoads leaves Washington University

Linden Rhoads, who has been the vice-provost of commercialisation at Washington University, is leaving the institution to return to private industry. She will remain with the university through the end of 2014 as executive director for commercialisation.

Rhoads, who joined Washington University in 2008, helped increase both the number of spin-outs and the number of patent filings.

The university has announced that electrical engineering professor Vikram Jandhyala will assume the new role of vice-provost of innovation. Jandhyala is stepping down from his position as chair of the Electrical Engineering department in order to take on the new position. He first joined the university in 2000, and produced a spin-out of his own in the form of Nimbic in 2006, a venture-backed cloud-based simulation software company which was acquired by Mentor Graphics earlier in 2014.

Greg Gottesman, who worked with Jandhyala at Nimbic, said: “He is uncommonly brilliant and has worked in industry and as a professor, department chair and company founder. Very few people understand what it means to start a company from a university lab, take it through venture funding and ultimate sale. He is the perfect choice for this important new innovation role at Washington University.”