Charles A. Hasemann, Ph.D., Assistant Vice President for Innovation and Economic Development at the Michigan State University Innovation Center, earned his doctorate in Molecular Immunology and performed his post-doctoral training in X-ray Crystallography. As an Assistant Professor at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, he established an NIH-funded laboratory studying immune system-related protein structure and function. He was subsequently recruited to Parke-Davis Pharmaceuticals in Ann Arbor, MI (later merged with Pfizer, Inc) as the Director of structure-based drug design, and via a series of expanding management positions, ultimately joined the Executive Management team with direction over all aspects of drug discovery at the Ann Arbor site, as well as global leadership responsibilities for Pfizer’s overall drug discovery technologies. In his capacities at Pfizer, Charles oversaw several extensive and productive collaborations with biotechnology companies and academic laboratories.
In his time at MSU, Charles has launched the Clinical & Translational Sciences Institute, Business Connect, and most recently, Spartan Innovations. Charles now leads the MSU Innovation Center, consisting of Business Connect, MSU Technologies, and Spartan Innovations; these three organizations comprise MSU’s effort to partner with the private sector in order to leverage the University’s intellectual assets for economic value. Combining his corporate research executive experience, with his academic research and administration experiences, Charles is well credentialed to lead the MSU Innovation Center on its mission to create productive research and technology commercialization relationships between MSU and the private sector, to connect regional entrepreneurs to the intellectual and technical capacity of the University, and to participate in regional economic activity endeavors.