Lili Portilla has worked in the area of strategic alliances at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), since 1989. She has extensive expertise in negotiating and developing commercialization strategies for complex, and multi-party collaborations and public private partnerships. Since December of 2011, Ms. Portilla has been serving as the Director of the Office of Strategic Alliances at the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) at the NIH. NCATS is the newest Center at the NIH focusing on the transformation of the translational science process so that new treatments and cures for disease can be delivered to patients faster. She oversees the Center’s partnership, strategic alliance, and technology transfer functions as well as the Program Director for the NCATS SBIR and STTR grant and contract programs.
Prior to NCATS, Ms. Portilla served as the Senior Advisor to the Director of the National Center for Research Resources and was also the Director of the National, Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, Office of Technology Transfer and Development. Ms. Portilla has also published several papers on pubic private partnerships. She received a Masters in Public Administration in 1992 from American University and a Bachelor in Business Administration in Finance in 1986 from Stephen F. Austin State University.