Moline Prak Pandiyan

Moline Prak Pandiyan is the Medical Technology Lead with RTI Innovation Advisors, a mission-driven innovation consultancy and business unit of RTI International. With a focus on the medical technology sector, she collaborates with and support company leaders, innovator program managers, and technology developers with their medical technology product innovations and strategic growth initiatives. She enables her clients to identify ways to diversify their product portfolio by supporting their commercialization and partnership strategies, leading to new products and services that enable greater patient care, improved clinical outcomes, and a more sustainable footprint.

Ms. Pandiyan's work spans across the medical ecosystem. She positions commercial clients to better understand the unmet medical needs that inform their product and technology development strategy and investment decisions; this includes supporting goals such as expanding their user and customer base and incorporating sustainability into their company strategy. When collaborating with university clients and academia, she helps them understand the commercialization and market potential of their biomedical innovations and works with technology transfer offices to prioritize intellectual property protection and support partnership development efforts. For government programs and agencies that include the National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the U.S. Department of Commerce National Institute of Standards and Technology, she supports translational science initiatives to ensure that federal, state, or regional funding programs and initiatives lead to impact and improved health outcomes.

With over 15 years of experience helping organizations innovate, Ms. Pandiyan empowers her clients to identify growth opportunities and improve medical technologies that enhance patient care and clinical outcomes.

She serves as the Program Manager for the NIH Technical and Business Assistance (TABA) Needs Assessment Program where she leads a team that advises small business innovators and entrepreneurs on their commercialization strategies. In 2020, she coauthored a study on "How to Rethink Regional Economic Development in the Era of COVID-19" to inform regional economic developers of the gaps, opportunities, and recommendations for building and strengthening industry clusters; Ms. Pandiyan led the biohealth industry cluster recommendations, evaluating both pre- and post-COVID considerations.

Ms. Pandiyan frequently serves as a coach and mentor for innovation teams and has served on several industry panels, providing her expertise and voice on how to overcome innovation barriers and challenges.

Before joining RTI in 2009, Ms. Pandiyan served as a New Ventures Fellow for the Duke University Coulter Translational Partnership Program and led a research team studying entrepreneurial motivations for the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.