Idaho State University hires Christopher Fasel Director of Technology Transfer

POCATELLO – Idaho State University has announced that it has hired Christopher Fasel as director of technology transfer.

“My main goal is economic development,” said Fasel, a patent lawyer who has biochemistry and biology undergraduate degrees. “We have an obligation to try to make everyone’s lives better. Whether it is a new battery or storage device, a new way of communicating, a medical device or a pharmacy discovery, we have an obligation to make sure ISU’s discoveries benefit the greater public.”

Before coming to ISU, Fasel most recently was the technology commercialization manager at the Mercy Hospital System, a seven-state hospital system based in St. Louis, Missouri. Prior to that, he spent more than five years as associate director and intellectual property counsel for UAMS BioVentures and as general counsel for MitoGene, LLC, both based in Little Rock, Arkansas.

He also has experience doing intellectual property acquisition as a patent attorney for a law practice based in Washington, D.C. and as a licensing associate for the University of Missouri Office of Technological Management and Industry Relations in Columbia, Missouri. His law degree is from the University of Kansas School of Law and his undergraduate degrees are from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine.

“Working with a technology board and the College of Business, our office will evaluate the possibilities that technology and intellectual property is patentable or can otherwise be protected by copyright or as trade secrets, whatever is applicable,” Fasel said. “

His office will also interact with for-profit entities that do use ISU research results to make sure that ISU and the inventors get a portion of whatever profit is made using the technology.

For example, he said when ISU gets a patent, the University could either start a new company based around that technology or license that technology to an existing company that would do the commercialization, development and sales of that technology or service. In the latter case, ISU would get a royalty or equity ownership percentage for the rights it issued to the company to use the new product.

“We want to get the product to the market and get money back to ISU, and the money would be split between the inventor, their college and part of it stays with ISU,” Fasel said.

The Texas native who has lived throughout the United States said that he is excited about the opportunities offered to him at ISU.

“This job opportunity is exactly what I wanted to be doing with my career and this region of the country is a place my wife and I always wanted to live,” Fasel said. “We love the mountains and the outdoors and we are situated in one the best areas in the country for doing that, whether it be biking, hiking or skiing. This is a dream job for me in a dream location.”

Fasel and his wife, Allison, have a 2-1/2-year-old son Ayres and a 6-month-old daughter Adele.