Keith J. Jones
Keith Jones became Director of the Office of Intellectual Property Administration and Executive Director of the WSU Research Foundation at Washington State University in February 2005. Formerly he was director of Commercialization in Life Sciences for Virginia Tech Intellectual Properties Inc. His experience also includes serving as Scientific Adviser to Lyon & Lyon LLP in San Diego, one of the largest intellectual property law firms in the country. In that role, he was involved in litigation involving key patents in plant biotechnology. He also has worked for Mycogen Corp., an agricultural biotechnology company in San Diego, conducting agricultural biotechnology technical development and marketing in the Middle East and Southeast Asia and serving as a research scientist.
Dr. Jones has served as a USAID contractor for two years, working on university development in Sumatera. He is chair of the Executive Committee for the Public Intellectual Property Resource for Agriculture (PIPRA), an international organization set up to ensure broad access to agricultural technologies. He also advises the Central Advisory Service on Intellectual Property (CAS-IP) for the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). He serves on the Board of Connect NW, the Idaho Research Foundation and on Geomonkey Inc. He is a sought-after speaker on intellectual property matters at national and international events. At WSU, he has successfully led the university’s efforts to turn the results of university research into economic development opportunities in the private sector and as such increased both its commercial and societal impact. The Washington State Research Foundation is a non-profit corporation that facilitates the transfer of research and technology from the WSU campuses statewide into the private sector. Dr Jones earned his Ph.D. in plant pathology at North Carolina State University and is the holder of three patents.
