Fusion — Faculty
Who teaches Fusion
The faculty bring together law, technology transfer, and commercial practice. Between them they have run venture funds, managed university IP portfolios, launched companies out of research institutions, and written the scholarship that frames the field.
Ted Theofrastous
Managing Director, Fusion Distinguished Practitioner in Residence, CWRU School of Law Partner, and Chair of the Intellectual Property, Technology & New Ventures practice group, Kohrman Jackson & Krantz
Extensive experience in high-technology development and commercialization, both as a business architect and as a legal professional. At KJK he also chairs the firm's AI Strategy, Risk Management & Compliance practice. Previously managing director and fund counsel for a family venture fund, and before that managed IP portfolios and launched startups for the Cleveland Clinic Foundation. Earlier practice at Squire, Sanders & Dempsey in Cleveland and London, focused on the nexus of investment capital and technology. Managing Attorney for the School of Law's IP Venture Clinic.
Joseph Jankowski
Senior Advisor for Innovation and Economic Development Office of the Senior Vice President for Research Case Western Reserve University
Co-teaches the full-year core sequence. Brings the university's technology transfer perspective directly into the classroom — the institutional mechanics of how academic discoveries actually move, what a technology transfer office can and cannot do, and why the constraints on a tax-exempt institution shape every licensing conversation.
Craig Nard
Tom J.E. and Bette Lou Walker Professor of Law Director, Spangenberg Center for Law, Technology and the Arts CWRU School of Law
A leading patent law scholar. Anchors the doctrinal foundation the program is built on — the origins and theory of the patent system, the anatomy of an issued patent, the substantive requirements of patentability, and the enforcement questions that determine whether a claim is worth anything in practice.
Recognition
Fusion Program Fellows
Each year we have the honor of selecting key contributors to the Fusion program as Fellows. These individuals represent not only the height of talent and professionalism in their field, but have also demonstrated a real commitment to Fusion's academic mission.
Erich Spangenberg
2012 Fellow
Chairman, IPNav
Richard Wesorick
2011 Fellow
Partner, Tarolli, Sunheim, Covell & Tumino LLP
Also teaching
The people who are not on the payroll
A great deal of Fusion is taught by people with no formal appointment to it — and the program could not run its method against an unfamiliar scientific field without them.
Every cycle brings in the researchers whose field is under study, along with clinicians, technology transfer professionals, entrepreneurs, and venture investors who sit with teams and press their assumptions. Past cycles have been anchored by Joseph Nadeau in genomics, and by J. Thomas Mortimer and P. Hunter Peckham in neural engineering. The final review panel is drawn from the same community.