I do a fair amount of work with people from other parts of MIT, including John Preston, the co-director of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center. John used to direct the MIT Technology Licensing Center, the folks responsible for clearing the way to have MIT technology used as the basis for forming new companies like Akamai. His successor, Lita Nelson, is an advisor on intellectual property for IAVI, the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. As she points out, “The American population is wearing a blindfold on this issue. Because the drugs are keeping people alive, we’re starting to think of AIDS like we think about pneumonia. But there is no cure for AIDS. And the rate [of infection] is climbing again in California.”
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