Leadership
Laura Silva
Director, Licensing & IP
Ms. Silva drives many of Velocys’ commercial activities, including programs to advance Velocys’ technology in the petrochemical and specialty chemical markets. Ms. Silva also leads Velocys’ intellectual property management and licensing. She led the emulsions team, which resulted in Velocys’ first product sale in 2007. In 2008, she was part of the Velocys team awarded an R&D100 award for the Velocys microchannel Fischer Tropsch Reactor.
Prior to joining Velocys, Laura served as a Commercialization Manager at Battelle’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratories, which included stewarding two platform technologies through the point of launching their commercial spin-outs as Vitex, Inc. and Velocys, Inc. While at Battelle, Laura won two national Federal Laboratory Consortium awards for technology transfer and licensing. Prior to Battelle, she designed and provided technical support for hydrocracking, refining, and petrochemical processing units at Chevron Research Company. She holds 7 U.S. patents and has authored/co-authored more than 20 publications. Laura has a B.S. and an M.S. in Chemical Engineering from Washington State University and is a registered professional engineer in the state of Washington.