Dr. Kessler was formerly Vice President, Corporate Development at Ixion, a biotech company located in Alachua, Florida, where he was responsible for managing Ixion's intellectual property and technology transfer activities, identifying potential academic and commercial collaborators, negotiating in-license agreements and collaboration agreements with major pharmaceutical or biotech companies, assisting in the preparation of the strategic and product development planning, compiling competitive intelligence and providing marketing input to development scientists. Before joining Ixion, Dr. Kessler was director of intellectual properties and technology transfer at Univax Biologics/Nabi, a bio-pharmaceutical company. Prior to that, he served as science advisor to a Washington, D.C. law firm and as a patent examiner in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Dr. Kessler received his Ph.D. in molecular and population genetics from the University of Georgia in 1984 and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.