Patricia Knighten, a local businesswoman with experience in tech and government, is the new director of innovation commercialization at New Mexico State University's Arrowhead Center. She will work to help commercialize research from NMSU's faculty, staff and students, according to a Wednesday release from the college.
“Our efforts at Arrowhead Center align with the strategic plan for NMSU across the board,” Knighten said in a statement. “It’s incentivizing an entrepreneurial culture and creating more partnerships with industry of all kinds, small and large, to leverage the university research. We want to promote the conversion of research into products with commercial potential."
Knighten brings experience from startups, Fortune 500 companies, federal research laboratories and government agencies. Her experience involved developing and implementing "advancement strategies" for government and business, the release says. Knighten was previously vice president of business development at Albuquerque-based Vibrant Corp.
She is also the former director of the New Mexico Economic Development Department's Office of Science & Technology, where she helped bring about the state's Catalyst Fund, which invests in venture capital funds. She also executed a technology accelerator pilot program, the release says.
Knighten's efforts could help advance a certain type of technology that NMSU is uniquely positioned to create.
“The agricultural efforts at NMSU are going to be a crucial part of our state’s future and it’s up to the collaboration between NMSU researchers, Arrowhead Center and business partners to align innovations that bringing solutions to that problem space," she said in a statement.
Knighten's appointment comes not long after the Arrowhead Center named Brooke Montgomery as the new director of Studio G, a student business accelerator, as well as the American Indian Business Enterprise Center. Montgomery is founder and CEO of Pivotal Biotech, a company developing respiratory therapy equipment, Business First reported.
