PULLMAN, Wash. — Leona C. Fitzmaurice has been appointed executive
director of the Office of Intellectual Property Administration at Washington
State University and the WSU Research Foundation. She will begin her new
duties in late January 2000.
Fitzmaurice comes to WSU from the University of Florida, where she was the
associate director for the Office of Technology Licensing.
As executive director, Fitzmaurice will supervise the activities of the Office of
Intellectual Property Administration and the Research and Technology Park.
She will be responsible for the development and management of intellectual
properties for WSU, including patents, copyrights and trademarks.
The executive director reports jointly to the vice provost for research and the
chair of the WSU Research Foundation.
At the University of Florida, Fitzmaurice was responsible for managing the
university’s intellectual property portfolio in the biomedical sciences,
veterinary medicine and agriculture. Her caseload included 300 U.S. cases and
their foreign counterparts.
Fitzmaurice also served as the assistant director for outreach for the University
of Wisconsin Biotechnology Center and was founder and C.E.O. of Smart
Plants International, Inc., in San Diego. She was a research expert at the
Laboratory of Immunology at the National Institutes of Health. She received
her doctorate in cellular and molecular biology from the University of Southern
California, Los Angeles.
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