Dr. Laura Prestia is the Associate Director for National Laboratory Commercialization Programs within the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Technology Transitions (OTT). In this role, Laura leads the planning and implementation of programs that support energy technology commercialization, lab-to-market skill development, and advancing technology transfer efforts.
Before joining OTT, Laura served as the Senior Innovation Manager at the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health (NIH), where her experience spanned patenting, licensing, technology transactions, invention development, marketing, and program creation, implementation, & management. While at NIH, Laura collaborated across institutes, labs, and universities to drive significant initiatives that supported the development of NIH technologies and early scientist’s careers in the lab and technology transfer, including, NIH’s first intramural I-Corps® program, the Technology Transfer Ambassadors Program (TTAP) [internship], and two post-doctoral fellowship programs that focused on innovation and industry careers.
Laura holds a B.S. in Biology from Syracuse University at Utica College and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the State University of New York (SUNY) Upstate Medical University. During her graduate studies, Laura also worked within the New York State Science and Technology Law Center and the Central New York Biotech Accelerator.