Retired Director of the MIT Technology Licensing Office
Lita Nelsen spent 30 years in the Technology Licensing Office of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 25 of them as director of the office. During that time, the MIT TLO licensed over 500 startup companies based on MIT research technology. She is the author of many articles and book chapters on technology transfer. During her tenure at the MIT TLO she was invited to lecture and consult in tech transfer and university-based entrepreneurship in over 20 countries around the world. She was a co-founder of Praxis (now Praxis-Auril) a UK non-profit company for training tech transfer professionals, or which she was awarded a Member of the British Empire (MBE) by the UK government. Having retired from MIT, Lita is now a consultant for young startups licensing technology from universities. She volunteers as a mentor in the MIT Sandbox Program, mentoring undergraduate and graduate students working on starting companies.
Lita’s education is all from MIT: B.S. and M.S. in Chemical Engineering, and an MBA as a Sloan Fellow at the MIT Sloan School of management. Her first job after MIT was in her MS thesis advisor’s startup company; she spent 15 years working in industry in the fields of membrane separations and biotechnology, before joining the MIT TLO.
