President
Focus IP Group, LLC
Past President
Association of University Technology Managers
The Focus IP Group provides a variety of consulting services in intellectual property matters, including technology assessment, technology valuation, technology scouting, technology transfer, professional development for technology transfer professionals, teaching the commercialization of early stage technologies and serving as an Expert Witness in intellectual property disputes.
For 15 years, Dr. Stevens led Boston University’s Office of Technology Transfer. During this period, Boston University’s Office of Technology Development spun out over 50 companies based on the University’s research, a number of which raised substantial amounts of capital, and the University’s licensing income climbed steadily. He then became Special Assistant to the Vice President for Research for two years before retiring from full time employment at BU. For ten years he was also a Lecturer in the Strategy and Innovation Department in Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, where he taught two graduate-level, inter-disciplinary courses on Technology Commercialization. Before joining Boston University he was Director of the Office of Technology Transfer at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, a teaching affiliate of the Harvard Medical School.
He is a Guest Professor at Osaka University, Japan, where he teaches G-TEC, an intensive summer course on technology commercialization, and a Principal Investigator at the National University of Singapore (Suzhou) Research Institute, where he teaches professional development courses on technology management. He has also taught in Belgium, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, India, Iran, Holland, Korea, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, S. Africa, Sri Lanka, Switzerland and Thailand.
Prior to entering the technology transfer profession, Dr. Stevens worked in the biotechnology industry for nearly ten years. He was a co-founder of Kytogenics, Inc. and Genmap, Inc., and was Vice President of Business Development for BioTechnica International. He started his career with The Procter & Gamble Company, where he held a number of positions in commercial development, sales, marketing, product management, strategic planning and acquisitions and mergers.
Dr. Stevens publishes and lectures frequently on many aspects of technology transfer, including the Bayh-Dole Act, the economic impact of technology transfer and its role in economic development, the contribution of academia to the discovery of new drugs, vaccines and medical devices, the role of technology transfer in global health and technology valuation. He was the recipient of the Bayh-Dole Award at the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) 2007 Annual Meeting and became President of AUTM in March 2010. He is also active in the Licensing Executives Society.
Dr. Stevens holds a Bachelor of Arts in Natural Sciences, a Master of Arts and a Doctor of Philosophy in Physical Chemistry from Oxford University. He is a Certified Licensing Professional and a Registered Technology Transfer Professional.