Dr. Ed Pagani is the Assistant Vice President of External Partnerships and Executive Director of the Office for External Partnerships (OEP) at Duke University. OEP establishes, facilitates, and supports mutually beneficial relationships between public and private sector organizations and the University to accelerate basic and translational research and innovation across Duke that will significantly impact society. Pagani brings a wealth of experience to his role, having worked in both industry and academia, with an emphasis on drug discovery, clinical diagnostics, and IP transfer. Before joining Duke in 2022, he spent eight years at University of Michigan's Office of Innovation Partnerships. Pagani has held management and executive positions spanning twenty-seven years in the pharmaceutical and clinical diagnostic sectors. Notable roles include leading drug discovery programs and overseeing strategic research alliances and IP licensing at Pfizer, and General Manager/Assistant VP at Beckman Coulter managing an ISO-13485-certified chemical manufacturing site, and Beckman's immunodiagnostic assay business. He holds a bachelor's in psychology from Columbia University and a doctorate in physiology from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. He undertook post-doctoral training at Brigham & Women's Hospital/Harvard Medical School, with a fellowship from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.