Van N. Truskett, Ph.D., serves as Director of Technology Innovation Development for the Office of Technology Commercialization and the Executive Director of the Texas Innovation Center at the University of Texas at Austin. In this role, Dr. Truskett brings her expertise in innovation and entrepreneurship to foster the commercialization of university-based discoveries and enable young startup companies to succeed. Dr. Truskett is a nationally recognized technology and business leader with over 14 years of technical, operations and strategic leadership experience. Dr. Truskett played a critical role in a team that developed the startup, Molecular Imprints, Inc., a spinout from the University of Texas at Austin. The startup advanced into a successful enterprise that was acquired by Canon in 2014 to form Canon Nanotechnologies, the world’s market and technology leader for high-resolution, low cost-of-ownership nanoimprint lithography systems and solutions for the semiconductor industry.
She is the recipient of numerous awards including the 2014 Industrial Research & Development Award from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the 2016 O’Donnell Award in Technology Innovation from The Academy of Medicine, Engineering, and Science of Texas, and was inducted as a Distinguished Engineering Graduate from the Cockrell School of Engineering in 2016 and into the Academy of Distinguished Chemical Engineers of the McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering in 2017 at the University of Texas at Austin.
Dr. Truskett received her Ph.D. from The Johns Hopkins University and B.S. from The University of Texas at Austin, both in chemical engineering.