Prof. Dr. ir. Margriet Drouillon specializes in upscaling of new technologies from the lab to their full-scale applications in the blue economy and links this to the skills portfolio that will be required to establish a future-proof blue workforce. The position is coupled to the Chair Marine Bio-Economy: from Research to Sustainable Business. In addition, Margriet is senior business developer (IOF) at Ghent University and acts as Chief Business Officer for the University's Research & Development (R&D) activities in the field of Aquaculture and Blue Life Sciences. She oversees the commercialization of new research findings to market-ready technologies and products in close collaboration with Faculty members and senior researchers. This involves i.a.:- Managing the portfolio of collaborations with academic and industrial partners- Building a strategic patent portfolio- Setting out priorities and securing funding for application and commercialisation directed R&D - both from university funds and from grant awarding bodies e.g. EU, IWT …She also co-teaches the Master course ‘Management in the Aquaculture Industry’ (cost accounting, investment analyses).Margriet has more than 10 years of experience in life sciences technology transfer, more specifically in the fields of aquaculture, renewables, biobased technologies and bioproducts (industrial biotechnology, biocatalysis, green chemistry). She engineered several strategic alliances, research collaborations and licensing deals with industry partners and was actively involved in the pre-seed and start-up phases of several spin-off companies. This included i.a.:- Building a customer portfolio- Working out business cases - Giving informal and formal presentations for potential investors- Setting out the priorities and securing funding for R&DMargriet obtained her PhD at the Catholic University of Leuven and her Executive MBA at Vlerick Business School.Interests: innovation process, innovation management, business model innovation, corporate and business unit strategy, organization design, change management, intellectual property, in- and out- licensing.