Sujatha Rochford, PhD* provides strategic counselling to clients in the life science space, primarily managing patent portfolio, conducting due diligence on IP acquisitions, as well as licensing, commercialization and technology transfer for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.

Prior to becoming a patent agent, Sujatha began her legal career as a scientific advisor. Her patent prosecution experience includes drafting and prosecuting patents in diverse subject matters that include recombinant protein therapy, small molecules, nanoparticle drug delivery systems, polymers, peptides, soil compositions, dry powder inhalation therapy, molecular diagnostics, flow battery, and oil drilling compositions. Her technical background is in organic and inorganic chemistry, electrochemistry, photovoltaics, renewable energy, materials science, molecular imaging and biotechnology.

Sujatha received her PhD in chemistry from Rutgers University, where she studied the aggregation of custom synthesized molecular dyes at semiconductor surfaces and investigated their interfacial electron transfer processes in dye-sensitized solar cells via electrochemical and photophysical methods. During her postdoctoral studies at University of Pennsylvania, Sujatha synthesized and studied various metal coordination compounds for biomedical imaging applications. Sujatha was a research fellow at Harvard Medical School-Massachusetts General Hospital, where she developed small molecule zinc fluorophores and studied endogenous zinc levels in animal models.

*Non-lawyer professional