Carol Mimura, Ph.D., RTTP is the Assistant Vice Chancellor for Intellectual Property & Industry Research Alliances (IPIRA) at the University of California, Berkeley. IPIRA is the portal to Berkeley for industry access to Berkeley’s preeminent faculty and research capabilities.
Carol has served as a member of the Forum on Drug Discovery, Development, and Translation of the National Academies of Sciences Institute of Medicine, on the boards of the Children’s Hospital Research Institute in Oakland, CA and BayBio, the regional voice of biotechnology in Northern California (as the Chancellor's alternate). She was a former Director and Executive Director of U.C. Berkeley’s Office of Technology Licensing, is a Registered Technology Transfer Professional, has received a Deal of Distinction award from the Licensing Executives Society, the President's Cup from Yale, an inaugural Patents for Humanity Award from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, several Distinguished Service Awards and a Chancellor's Special Service Award from UC Berkeley.
She established the office of IP and Industry Research Alliances (IPIRA) at UC Berkeley in 2004. UC Berkeley now has over 1,400 corporate sponsors of research and has increased industry expenditures by 8-fold since the office's inception. She was the lead negotiator for a $500M agreement with BP that established the Energy Biosciences Institute at UC Berkeley and stewarded a first-in-class melanoma drug from patenting, licensing, and ultimate monetization of the license royalty for $87.5M, with the possibility of additional milestone payments. The proceeds were used at UC Berkeley to enhance cancer research and stem cell facilities, undergraduate biology teaching laboratories, graduate student programs, faculty retentions and research infrastructure. She also established a Socially Responsible Licensing Program under which technological solutions from Berkeley are being deployed in low- and middle-income countries. More than 295 startup companies that were founded to commercialize a patent under license from UC Berkeley directly created more than 11,000 jobs, raised $3.3B over the last year (August 2023 through July 2024), and raised more than $31.3B to date. 54 companies have had a merger or acquisition, with cash and stock values over $9.2B. 25 companies have exited via IPO. Over 825 products have been commercialized under license and dozens more are in the pipeline. For more information, see the IPIRA Impact webpage.
Prior to her positions at U.C. Berkeley, Carol was an analyst at Technology Forecasters, a consultant to Cor Therapeutics and Genomyx, and wrote for the Genetic Engineering News.
She holds a B.S. degree from Yale University in Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry and Ph.D. in Biology (biochemistry and microbiology concentration) from Boston University. She was an NIH-sponsored postdoctoral fellow and research scientist at U.C. Berkeley in Biochemistry and in Chemical Biodynamics.
Carol’s public policy articles include:
- Nuanced Management of IP Rights: Shaping University-Industry Relationships to Promote Social Impact. In Working Within the Boundaries of Intellectual Property(Rochelle Dreyfuss, Harry First, Diane Zimmerman. Oxford University Press, March 2010) which can be downloaded from: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1434545
- Socially Responsible Licensing, Euclidean Innovation and the Valley of Death. Perspective in Stanford Journal of Law, Science and Policy, Issue on Access to Medicine in the Developing World. Summer - Fall, 2011. See: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1928837
- Technology Licensing for the Benefit of the Developing World: UC Berkeley’s Socially Responsible Licensing Program. In Journal of the Association of the University Technology Managers. Fall 2006 Vol. XVII Number 2, and reprinted in Industry and Higher Education (Vol. 21, No. 4, August 2007).
- Strengthening Mechanisms to Prioritize, Coordinate, Finance and Execute R&D to Meet Health Needs in Developing Countries. Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. Discussion paper January 16, 2013. globalhealthrd.pdf
and has scholarly publications on the sucrose phosphotransferase system in Streptococcus mutans and the histidine permease in Salmonella typhimurium in:
- The Journal of Biological Chemistry
- The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Infection and Immunity
- Analytical Biochemistry
- Biochimica and Biophysica Acta
- Journal of Cellular Biochemistry
- FEMS Microbiological Reviews
- Advances in Enzymology
- Abstracts of the American Society for Microbiology
