Gary Plourde serves as a DefTech Advisor for the joint initiative between TEDCO, the Maryland Department of Commerce, and the U.S. Department of Defense. He is a recent graduate of the George Washington University School of Law (LLM in IP) where his studies focused on Intellectual Property [IP], licensing of novel technology, and US government procurement of IP. He is originally from Bar Harbor, Maine and attended Clemson University (PhD in organic chemistry). His PhD research at Clemson focused on breast cancer research – specifically, modeling and synthetically designing tumor prodrugs for tunable affinity to biological targets, while yielding more desirable therapeutic effects. His professional interests are rooted in Computational Biology, Molecular Modeling, IP valuation and IP Licensing.
Gary has several years of technology transfer and IP valuation experience. Before joining TEDCO Maryland, Gary was a Presidential Management Fellow [PMF] working on IP policy in the Office of the Director at the National Institutes of Health [NIH]. In this policy-focused role at the NIH, he served on Inter-agency IP policy committees and researched IP policy matters for United States Congresswomen and men. He previously worked as a Senior IP & Licensing Officer at the University of California, Davis [UCD]. In the Senior IP Officer role, Gary managed license agreements for Delix. Delix technology was developed in the UCD Chemistry Department and is commercially available. Additionally at UCD, he provided crucial start-up support for a promising, new company that invented Jelly Ice Cubes [JIC]. In supporting this startup, he provided wide-ranging guidance – from filing international IP applications; designing marketing campaigns to promote and commercialize the JIC innovation; to executing Option Agreements with companies having commercial interest in JIC tech. Jelly Ice Cubes is a technology developed in the UC Davis Agricultural School and is protected by multiple patents.
In his free time, Gary enjoys spending time outdoors, hiking, sailing, reading philosophy, cooking, researching genealogy, and traveling