Innovation Manager
Catholic University of Leuven, Leuven Health Technology Centre
Belgium

Responsibilities

We are looking for an innovation manager to coordinate and increase the valorization of the basic and strategic research activities in the field of technology enhanced active and healthy living. You will be the principal contact person for industrial partners, and will coordinate the contacts, the contracts and collaboration between industry and the applying research groups. A main objective is to realise business development from science based products and services. You will be assigned multiple tasks including:

• Continuously updating a detailed overview of available expertise and valorisation needs in the involved partners of KU Leuven and UZ Leuven within L-HTC;
• Identifying relevant (international) companies and institutions; 
• Setting up partnerships for developing technology for active and healthy lifestyle monitoring
• Coordinating (EU) project writing; 
• Supporting development of prototypes, proof-of-concept systems;
• Organising living labs for testing newly developed lifestyle monitoring systems;
• Taking necessary actions for protection of intellectual property (IP) in collaboration with KU Leuven Research & Development;
• Involvement in setting up royalty and license agreements in collaboration with KU Leuven Research& Development;
• Exploring of potential spin-off activities in collaboration with relevant KU Leuven/UZLeuven research groups and KU Leuven Research & Development;  

Profile

We expect that:

• you either have a master's degree in e.g. economics, biomedical engineering, bio-engineering or life sciences and a minimum 5 years of experience in applied or strategic basic research in a biomedical or -technical domain or a PhD degree in one of the abovementioned domains;
• you have knowledge and experience in the management of a research portfolio and good organizational skills (managing meetings, financial management, follow-up contacts, in time reporting);
• you are passionate about translational research initiative and have an entrepreneurial mindset;
• you are pro-active in exploring collaboration potential also with industrial partners;
• you are a facilitator and you have good communication, networking and negotiation skills;
• you have interest in and knowledge about intellectual property and regulatory aspects;
• you are fluent in English (both spoken and written). Fluency in Dutch or willingness to learn Dutch is an asset.

It is an asset if:

• you have several years of active experience and reference record in business development of products and/or services and in developing valorization strategies in the health technology industry;
• you have experience in working within academic and industrial consortia in both healthcare and/or life science sectors;
• you have a proven track record in writing regional, national and/or European grants.

Offer

An exciting and challenging job, focused on continuous innovation and development in a transdisciplinary and international context. We offer a permanent position as Innovation Manager of the Industrial Research Fund (IOF) at KU Leuven, a world famous university.

Interested?

For more information please contact Mr. Sammy Brié, tel.: +32 16 37 37 24, mail: sammy.brie@kuleuven.be or Prof. dr. ir. Jean-Marie Aerts, tel.: +32 16 32 14 34, mail: jean-marie.aerts@kuleuven.be.

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