The University of Tennessee Research Foundation (UTRF) has announced that Delira Robbins, Ph.D., has joined the organization as a Licensing Assistant.
Before joining UTRF, Delira was a postdoctoral fellow at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Her research there focused on novel protein-protein interactions involved in chemoresistance. She also served as an intern in St. Jude’s Office of Technology Licensing for a year, performing market assessments, and identifying novel applications of current inventions to incentivize commercialization.
In addition, she attended the Managing Science in the Biotech Industry Course at the Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Sciences. While in Claremont, she worked in a collaborative team of five scientists to provide an opportunity analysis for a novel bladder cancer diagnostic biomarker through scientific validation research and market analysis to determine the economic and patient value that would benefit payors.
“I’m thrilled to welcome Delira to the UTRF team at the UT Health Science Center. With a strong background in both science and commercialization we know that she is going to do a great job bringing UTHSC inventions from the lab to the marketplace,” said Richard Magid, Vice President of UTRF in Memphis.
Delira will focus on technologies in the human health sciences that include Pharmacology, Biochemistry, Cell & Molecular Biology, Pathology and Dentistry. Delira obtained her Ph.D. from Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center-Shreveport. Her doctoral research focused on chemoprevention using an antioxidant approach during early stage skin carcinogenesis and led to several peer-reviewed publications and book chapters and has received more than 100 citations.