Janette James
Michael Hartman, Esq.
Jackie Rodriguez, Esq.
Christine Baxter, Esq.
A negotiator in PCI’s Corporate Contracts group since 2014, Christine manages and supports the University of Pennsylvania’s research and business activities through structuring, drafting, and negotiating a variety of corporate and commercial contracts. Prior to joining PCI, Christine worked for 6 years as a commercial litigator at Archer & Greiner. Christine lives in New Jersey with her husband and two children.
Benning Wang
Benning joined Penn in 2018. As the alliance manager for the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at Penn (PICI@Penn), Benning works closely with PICI@Penn investigators as well as representatives from other institutions in the PICI consortium to move collaborative translational cancer immunotherapy research forward from preclinical development to clinical testing and commercial partnerships.
Prior to joining PCI, Benning worked for seven years at the Duke University Office of Licensing and Ventures managing biological material and research tool portfolio licenses and financial analysis. Before her move to the United States, Benning managed strategic biopharmaceutical infrastructure and discovery projects for the Taiwanese Ministry of Economic Affairs as part of the Promotion Plan for the Biotechnology Industry. She also served as a Law Clerk at the Civil Appeal Court in Taiwan.
Benning received an M.S. in Biochemical Sciences from National Taiwan University, an MBA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a L.L.B from the National Taiwan University Law School. Benning is also a Certified Licensing Professional (CLP).
Michael Yocum
Michael works with Licensing Officers and attorneys in the Corporate Alliance group to manage active relationships with alliance partners.
Denene Wambach, Esq.
Denene provides legal support to PCI leadership and to the Corporate Alliances Team at PCI. In that capacity, Denene handles complex licensing transactions, supports contracting efforts at the Center for Cellular Immunotherapy (CCI), and also handles manufacturing and supply agreements, patent litigation and related adversarial matters related to Penn’s patent portfolio, such as IPRs and Opposition proceedings in Europe.
Man Liang, PhD
Man joined PCI in 2011 working first as a licensing officer in the Life Science Licensing team, and more recently as Alliance Manager for the Corporate Alliance team. In her current role, Man is responsible for negotiating and managing alliance programs for the university. She has broad experience in technology commercialization, partnership development and alliance management. Man manages a diverse technology portfolio and several large-scale alliance programs at Penn.
Prior to joining Penn, Man held a licensing and commercialization position at Cleveland Clinic Innovations. She received her Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences from Medical University of Ohio and B.S. in microbiology from Wuhan University.
Robert Eugene Hormann
Bob joined PCI in 2019, and has been involved for more than 20 years in commercial biotechnology at firms of varying size and culture. He is knowledgeable about intellectual property strategy from the inventor’s perspective. Bob’s range of technological experience includes molecular design, synthesis, pharmacology, gene therapy, and drug development. He is the inventor of veledimex, the first clinical transcriptional activator for gene therapy.
Bob received his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Chicago and was an N.I.H. postdoctoral fellow at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (E.T.H.). Bob is PMP certified.
Mark Engleka, PhD
Mark joined PCI in 2014 as a member of the Corporate Alliances team. Mark serves as the alliance manager for several key alliance partnerships, taking an active role in ensuring that Penn and its partners meet their respective goals and maximize their collaboration opportunities. He has licensed several innovative cell therapy intellectual property portfolios to start-up companies that have raised substantial equity financing, have initiated multiple first-in-human trials, and have committed significant amounts of research and development funding to Penn under alliance program partnership agreements.
Prior to PCI, Mark worked for 12 years in marketing and business roles for companies in the life science research tool sector. Mark received a Ph.D. in Cell and Molecular Biology from Penn and attended Pennsylvania State University as an undergrad.