Dr. Laura Prestia is the Director for National Laboratory Programs within the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Technology Commercialization (OTC). In this role, Laura leads the planning and implementation of programs that support energy technology commercialization, entrepreneurship and lab-to-market skill development, and advancing the technology transfer mission across the National Labs.
Before joining OTC, 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 nationally recognized initiatives that supported the development of NIH technologies and early scientist’s careers including, NIH’s first intramural I-Corps® program, the Technology Transfer Ambassadors Program, and post-doctoral fellowships in innovation and entrepreneurship.
Laura holds a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the State University of New York (SUNY) Upstate Medical University and a B.S. in Biology from Syracuse University at Utica College. During
her doctoral research, Laura also worked within the New York State Science and Technology Law Center and the Central New York Biotech Accelerator.