The U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) appointed Mojdeh Bahar as associate director for innovation and industry services (ADIIS). 

In this capacity, she will report to Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology and NIST Director Walter G. Copan and serve as a member of the NIST senior leadership team. 

The ADIIS is NIST’s principal executive responsible for partnerships with industry, providing oversight for the key extramural and technology transfer programs of the institute, including the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program; the Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership; the Office of Advanced Manufacturing, which coordinates the interagency Manufacturing USA program; and the Technology Partnerships Office, which includes NIST’s Small Business Innovation Research Program.

The ADIIS has responsibility for enhancing the successful transfer of new technologies from NIST’s world-class research laboratories to commercial markets and for reporting on behalf of the federal government impacts from the nation’s more than $150 billion federal investment in research. Bahar will also be responsible for coordinating technology transfer policy development and implementation through a network of U.S. federal interagency technology transfer bodies.

Bahar comes to NIST from the Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Research Service, where she has served as the assistant administrator for technology transfer. 

There, she had broad responsibility for managing intellectual property and technology transfer across the USDA. She led the service’s external interactions with industry, academia and government dealing with intellectual property and technology transfer. 

Bahar previously worked at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as the chief of the Cancer Branch at the Office of Technology Transfer. 

There, she led a team responsible for marketing, patenting and licensing NIH and Food and Drug Administration inventions in the areas of cancer, gene therapy and biological response modifiers. She also served in several leadership roles with the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer, including as its national chair from 2011 to 2013. 

Before that, Bahar was an examiner with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). She is a Certified Licensing Professional, a Registered Technology Transfer Professional and a patent attorney registered to practice before the USPTO, the State of Maryland, the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. 

Bahar has spoken nationally and internationally on topics including intellectual property, technology transfer and commercialization, business development, and licensing.