Frederick A. Provorny is the founder of the Center for New Technology Enterprise, (the “Center”). The Center is an independent nonprofit educational organization that offers a comprehensive integrated Web-based program that not only gives students from a wide variety of disciplines real-world experience in facilitating technology commercialization from research institutions and government facilities by focusing on new venture creation but also harnesses the talents and motivation of its students by giving them opportunities to gain extensive experience in evaluating and finding applications for new technologies and furnishing entrepreneurs with an extensive and diverse suite of services in conjunction with a network of professionals, serial entrepreneurs, executives and investors. From 2004 to 2007, he was Director of the Maryland Intellectual Property Legal Resource Center (“MIPLRC”) and a Visiting Professor at the University Of Maryland School of Law. For five years before taking the helm at MIPLRC, Professor Provorny was the Harold R. Tyler Professor of Law and Technology at Albany Law School and the founding Director of the New York State Science and Technology Law Center (“STLC”), the first program of its kind in the United States.

Professor Provorny brings to the Center more than thirty years of experience in intellectual property law, complex business transactions, venture capital, and technology commercialization and economic development. As Director of MIPLRC, he was responsible for a program that provides hands-on experience to law students and provides free intellectual property and business legal services to emerging technology companies throughout Maryland. Under Professor Provorny’s leadership, MIPLRC expanded from one site to four sites in technology incubators throughout Maryland, vastly enhanced the scope and complexity of its services, increased its enrollment from 2 to 17 students, attracted evening students and initiated year-round operation and nighttime office hours. MIPLRC developed a national reputation and built partnerships with a wide variety of stakeholders, including economic development organizations, chambers of commerce, government agencies, and other educational institutions during his tenure.

Under Professor Provorny’s direction, the STLC conducted an extensive series of educational programs offered throughout New York State for entrepreneurs, faculty, professional service providers and others that covered legal and funding issues facing emerging technology companies. Professor Provorny built a statewide interlocking network of partnerships between the STLC and a wide variety of stakeholders, including, but not limited to, economic development organizations, angel and venture capital groups, chambers of commerce, state and local government agencies and other educational and research institutions.

While Director of the STLC Professor Provorny created and directed the annual SmartStart Venture Forum®, at which emerging technology companies with extraordinary prospects presented to an audience of venture capitalists and other investors from all over the East Coast, Canada, and as far away as California and Japan. Under his leadership, the Venture Forum became one of the premier events of its kind in the East. Despite the fact that the Venture Forums held in October 2001 and October 2002 occurred during one of the worst periods for private equity investment ever, more than 36% of the presenting companies received funding as a result of their participation in these events. The Venture Forum led directly to the creation of the Upstate Venture Association of New York, Inc`. and the opening of offices in upstate New York by venture capital firms based in Boston.

After Professor Provorny started his career as Law Clerk to Judge Harold R. Medina of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, he joined the faculty of the Syracuse University College of Law. He has also taught at Brooklyn Law School and the University of Baltimore School of Law. In addition to practicing in his own firm and with major firms in New York City and Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, Professor Provorny was an Assistant Company Counsel for Monsanto Company in St. Louis. Professor Provorny has served as a mentor at the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship at the Robert H. Smith School of Business of the University of Maryland. He has consulted for research institutions and entities in the private and public sectors on major matters involving technology transfer, economic development, private equity investment in the technology sector, and other issues involving the confluence of law, technology and business. Professor Provorny is an inaugural recipient of the Certified Licensing ProfessionalTM (“CLPTM”) designation and holds CPA certificates in Maryland and Missouri. He is also on the Biotechnology Advisory Board of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (“UMBC”), and served on the Advisory Board of the Due Diligence Fellows Program of the Pennsylvania Angel Network. Currently Professor Provorny is teaching Legal & Ethical Issues in the Science Professions in the Professional Master of Professional Studies: Biotechnology and the Certificate in Professional Studies: Biotechnology Management programs at UMBC. Starting in 2009, he will be teaching several courses in the Technology Transfer Certificate Program at the FAES Graduate School at the National Institutes of Health.

Professor Provorny graduated summa cum laude from New York University and magna cum laude from Columbia Law School. He was an editor of the Columbia Law Review and a Columbia University International Fellow. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute, is on the Commercial Arbitration Panel of the American Arbitration Association, is active in numerous professional organizations and has published articles in academic and professional journals.