Dr. Maria C. Freire, Ph.D. has been named the new chief executive officer of the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development.
Dr. Freire comes from the Office of Technology Transfer (OTT) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) which she directed since 1995. The OTT is responsible for all patenting, marketing, licensing, and monitoring activities for the invention portfolios of NIH and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. As OTT director, Dr. Freire also was responsible for U.S. Department of Health and Human Services technology transfer policy development, including the intellectual property strategy for the public Human Genome Project.
Born in Peru, Dr. Freire trained at the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia in Lima. She obtained her Ph.D. in Biophysics from the University of Virginia and completed postgraduate work in immunology and virology at the University of Virginia and the University of Tennessee, respectively.