Featured Speakers

AUTM Annual Meeting

Get Inspired

Find insight and inspiration to conquer the world. Check out our lineup of headline speakers.

Fireside Chat

Kathi Vidal
Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office
 

 

As the chief executive of the USPTO, Kathi Vidal leads one of the largest intellectual property offices in the world, with more than 13,000 employees and an annual budget of more than $4 billion. She is the principal IP advisor to the President and the Administration, through the Secretary of Commerce, and is focused on incentivizing and protecting U.S. innovation, entrepreneurship and creativity. She leads an agency whose mission is to help American workers and businesses compete and collaborate, especially in ground-breaking technologies and across all demographics. Serving as Vice Chair of the Council for Inclusive Innovation, Vidal is working to bring more ideas to impact by expanding American innovation.

Throughout her career, Vidal has championed mentoring and expanded opportunities for individuals from underserved communities. She has played an active role on the advisory board of Chiefs in Intellectual Property, a network of women leaders in technology, law, and policy, and on other boards and committees focused on diversity and inclusion. She has also mentored diverse women through Fortune-U.S. Department of State Global Women’s Mentoring Partnership program.


Sponsored by


 

Monday Keynote

Inspiring Change by Embracing Innovation
Marcus Whitney
Founding Partner, Jumpstart Health Investors
 


Marcus Whitney is a Founding Partner of Jumpstart Health Investors (JHI), the most active early-stage healthcare venture capital firm in America. Of JHI’s funds, Marcus leads Jumpstart Nova, the first healthcare venture fund in America investing exclusively in Black-founded and led startups.

Marcus is the author of the Amazon #1 best-selling book "Create and Orchestrate", which focuses on claiming your creative power through entrepreneurship. His work has been featured by Entrepreneur, CNBC, Inc., NPR, Fast Company, and The Atlantic.

Marcus is an Aspen Health Innovators Fellow, and a member of the board of the Celtic Bank, Healthcare Finance Management Association, the Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum, the Nashville Convention and Visitors Corporation, OZ Arts, and Launch Tennessee.

Sponsored by

 


 

Wednesday Keynote

Development of an Open Access COVID Vaccine: Catalyzing Innovative Technology Transfer Models in the Vaccine Sciences
Dr. Maria Elena Bottazzi
Co-Director, Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development

Maria Elena Bottazzi, PhD, is an internationally-recognized vaccinologist and global health advocate for neglected tropical diseases (NTD). She is a Nobel Prize nominee for her ground-breaking work in the development of a COVID-19 vaccine. She was recently named Texan of the Year by the Dallas Morning News

With more than two decades of experience applying the product development partnership model, she has built sustainable biotechnology capacity and has successfully transitioned several NTD vaccines from bench up to Phase 2 clinical trials.

Dr. Bottazzi's keynote will focus on the Development of an Open Access COVID Vaccine: Catalyzing Innovative Technology Transfer Models in Vaccine Science.

For the last two decades, the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine and its Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development in Houston, Texas has operated with the mission to develop and test new low-cost safe and effective vaccines and build sustainable and innovative plans to advance technologies and tackle the neglected and emerging diseases. Biomedical research is crucial for global development and requires robust local capacity, sustained investment and kept up infrastructure to prevent and respond to many public health issues.

Sponsored by



Annual Meeting Sponsors