Kultaran Chohan
Senior Licensing Associate
Technology Transfer Office, NC State
Poulton Innovation Center 262
Bio
As Director of Licensing, Kultaran leads OTCNV’s team of licensing professionals as they work to facilitate the commercialization of university inventions/discoveries. Kultaran’s experience includes managing innovation, strategizing intellectual property assets, licensing technologies, and supporting startup company formation. Kultaran personally manages a portfolio of technologies in the areas of biotechnology, ag-biotech, pharmaceuticals, drug delivery, human and animal health, research tools, food industry, and bio-manufacturing. He also serves as a reviewer/panelist with the Small Business Innovation Research and Technology Transfer (SBIR/STTR) grant programs at both the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.
Kultaran earned a Ph.D. in Genetics from NC State University, a MS in biology from University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and a LL.M. in Intellectual Property and Technology Law from Washington University in St. Louis, MO. He is a member of the New York Bar Association and is licensed as an attorney in New York. He is a Certified Licensing Professional and joined OTCNV in 2011.
Education
PhD Genetics NC State University
MS Biology University of North Carolina, Greensboro
Area(s) of Expertise
Intellectual Property, Technology Evaluation, Commercialization, Technology Transfer, Start Up Company Formation, Licensing Product Development
Grants
We have developed an innovative combination of skills, resources, and strategies that will allow us to test important and novel hypotheses about how graduate students learn, the impact of program activities on employment and career outcomes for diverse students, and the overall viability of A2i as a national industry workforce readiness model. We anticipate that this model can also be adapted for job preparedness in other sectors. Ultimately, the proposed work will provide valuable information that can establish a knowledge base that provides U.S. institutions with strategies to better prepare graduate students in response to current and future national STEM workforce trends.
The purpose of this project is to demonstrate how inexpensive, disposable paper pumps can be used to improve the performance of immunoassays without adding significant cost. As proof-of-concept, we will use these pumps to increase the sensitivity of a commercial malaria diagnostic 10-fold.
Our technology is the use of novel strains of the yeast species Lachancea thermotolerans for the production of lactic acid. One of the primary markets for lactic acid is in the production of the biodegradable polymer Poly-Lactic Acid (PLA), which is currently a multi-billion dollars a year industry. Since our yeast is genetically unusual and functionally rare in its ability to naturally produce lactic acid, our technology has the potential to solve some of the current problems inherent to the use of microbial systems. These include: inability to grow at low pH, low yields and the need for complex nutrients. This project is designed to demonstrate the capabilities of our yeast strains to address these problems and meet the process targets of the PLA industry as described by NatureWorks LLC. The plan of work is in 3 phases: gene deletion using CRISPR technology; development of growth medium using design-of-experiment (DOE) and maximizing volumetric productivity based on the use of a continuous-flow system. Successfully achieving these targets will make the technology attractive for commercial producers of PLA.
The emergence of multidrug resistance and the increasingly recognized importance of beneficial bacteria have spurred calls for novel and targeted alternatives to antibiotics. We have developed a technology that can be programmed to kill specific bacteria. The technology combines bacteriophages and engineered Type I CRISPR-Cas systems. This technology offers the efficient delivery of targeted antimicrobials, with extensive potential in human therapeutics, livestock, agriculture, and biomanufacturing. This technology was disclosed to the Office of Technology Transfer (OTT) at North Carolina State University (NCSU IDFs 15243 & 15284) and in recognition of the significant scientific and commercial potential, OTT filed a provisional patent application titled ????????????????Methods and Composition for Efficient Delivery of Nucleic Acids and RNA-Based Antimcriobials??????????????? on June 15, 2015.