By MARTY LEVINE
Paul-Valentin Pitou links the world with Pitt.
As director of the Office of Industry & Economic Partnerships (part of the Office of Innovation & Entrepreneurship), Pitou connects Pitt researchers with companies across the globe in a sometimes years-long process that leads to collaborations — turning Pitt discoveries into everything from medical diagnoses and treatments to smarter energy and accessibility tech.
Pitou joined Pitt in 2017 — partly because Pittsburgh is where you end up if you were born in France, then lived and worked in Germany, Canada and (most recently) London, but marry a Pittsburgh native. Of course, he says, Pitt has the resources to allow him to do the work he began perfecting in all those other, farther-flung places, particularly as a relationship manager in a financial firm in Britain until Brexit — the country’s exit from the European Union — inspired him to leave as well.
“We start the conversation” between the right researcher and the right company, he says of his Pitt post.
This work, called alliance management, can take anywhere from six to 24 months from first inquiry to signed agreement. “Our role is to oversee the collaboration” so that both sides are happy with the result, he explains.
In September 2021, for instance, Pitou set up an initial meeting with VIC Technology Venture Development, headquartered in Arkansas, to discuss — among other Pitt ventures — Vital-Dent. School of Dental Medicine faculty member Juan Taboas’ research team had developed Vital-Dent — a way to stimulate regeneration of growth plates in children with facial trauma or carious lesions, to save their teeth. Three years later, this resulted in a Pitt partnership to commercialize the technology with VIC.
Pitou and his office stays involved in many phases of the work throughout this lengthy course, from budget agreements to licensing of patents and working with “venture builders and venture studios,” as Pitou terms it. Companies can bring management expertise and funding to help Pitt form about 12 startups a year, and his office is “looking to increase those numbers,” Pitou says
Another partnership facilitated by Pitou came in October 2023 between Pitt and a French company, bioMérieux, resulting in an agreement to undertake three years of collaborative research and development toward diagnostic improvements for infectious diseases.
That partnership took two years to form, Pitou says.
His work also sends him to conferences every year to make new connections and build on existing relationships all over the world. Of course, his office also focuses on attracting partnership right here in this region.
“Not all of them lead to a collaboration,” he says of his work, which involves “a lot of introductory calls to a lot of different parties.”
“When you work on a collaboration ... it takes a lot of your time for years, so when it leads to a collaboration it’s great. And ultimately the collaboration has an (effect) on real life. That is rewarding.”
Pittsburgh, he’s found — after several trips here through the years to visit the in-laws, “is a very nice city to live in,” with enough variety for “what you want to do — being outside, going to nice restaurants, a nice bar, going to listen to music and sharing a sporting event. Would I want more restaurants and more bars? Yes. But you can live at a nice pace ... it has a nice international flavor. Not as much as London,” but Pitt and Carnegie Mellon help in that regard.
When new or prospective Pitt partners visit from the East Coast or West Coast, or from Europe, he adds, “It’s always interesting to see their reactions. They’re often surprised to see how clean it is. They expect to see steel mills. ... They see the rivers and the trees.”
He recalls recent Japanese visitors “filled with awe at the Cathedral of Learning, Soldiers and Sailors, the museums. ... I think they can appreciate the history of it. Pittsburgh’s a small city but it has a lot of good ingredients. It’s a city very comfortable to live in.”
Marty Levine is a staff writer for the University Times. Reach him at martyl@pitt.edu or 412-758-4859.
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