Joseph Janda has worked with early stage technology evaluation, IP development and licensing, and university technology start-up companies for over a decade. His experience spans university technology transfer offices at Stony Brook University in New York, George Mason University in Virginia, and for a brief time Oregon Health and Science University focusing on the Knight Cancer Institute. He has been the Director of Innovation & Intellectual Property at Portland State University since 2011.
In these roles he has facilitated the movement of technologies and knowledge from university labs to commercial entities across a broad range of disciplines, and assisted in the formation of several university start-up companies in the fields of cancer and heart disease diagnostics, drug screening, early stage pharma, and remote sensors. As a board observer he has also coached and participated in start-up companies though their first years of operation.
He has also worked as a house painter, veterinary assistant, high school math teacher, biotechnology manufacturing technician, door to door vacuum cleaner salesman, and once spent a summer collecting colorful images of human molars being zapped with a laser.