Staff Profile: Alexandra de Paz, Assistant Director of New Ventures
If you ask Alexandra de Paz, PhD, she’ll tell you that a love for translational thinking seems to be familial. Her own excitement for new technologies grew following her sister’s interdisciplinary learning experiences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“Listening to my sister talk about her work was like listening to really evolved science fiction and I was completely hooked,” says de Paz, assistant director of the New Ventures at the Innovation and New Ventures (INVO) Office and Northwestern University Clinical and Translational Sciences (NUCATS) Institute.
INVO and NUCATS operate the shared Center for Translational Innovation, which serves to catalyze the translation of Northwestern innovations to benefit the public and promote economic growth. INVO is dedicated to working with faculty and students across Northwestern’s Chicago and Evanston campuses, as well as local partners at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, Northwestern Memorial Hospital, and the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, to protect intellectual property and commercialize research by supporting startup creation and partnerships with industry.