@RichChylla
Richard Chylla has been the Executive Director of MSU Technologies, the technology transfer office at Michigan State University, the nation’s pioneer land grant school since 2012. Rich leads an office of 20 professionals who manage the university’s diverse intellectual property portfolio. MSU Technologies has doubled both the number of licensing agreements and revenues under his leadership.
Rich has been in academic technology transfer since 2008. Prior to MSU, Rich served as the director of technology transfer for the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan, where he increased invention disclosures and engineering licensing agreements and initiated the formation of two start-up companies to commercialize university technologies. Prior to moving to academia, Rich was the Global Strategy Director for one of the business units at BASF where he managed the intellectual property portfolio, business strategy, and technology transfer for that business.
Rich spent the first 19 years of his career working in a variety of technology management, engineering, and product development roles for Johnson Polymer including assignments in Europe as the European Technical Director, and Asia as the Global Product Development Manager. He won his company’s highest inventor award three times, developing patented polymer technology that achieved over $1 billion in sales over its patent life.
Rich is a current member of the AUTM Board of Directors since February 2016 and also serves as the Treasurer for the AUTM Foundation Board of Directors.
Rich earned his bachelor’s and doctoral degrees in chemical engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology.