Innovation and Commercialization

The mission of the office of the Vice Provost for Research, Innovation, and Commercialization is to maximize the impact of the university’s research by advancing innovation, accelerating commercialization, and translating discoveries into societal and economic value. This is accomplished by close collaboration with faculty and their teams, engagement with key stakeholders, fostering industry partnerships, and by de-risking early-stage research to bridge the gap between discovery and real-world application.

Rima Al-awar holds the position of Vice Provost for Research Innovation and Commercialization at NYU Abu Dhabi, where she leads the strategic direction of the university’s research translation, commercialization, and industry engagement activities. She works closely with academic leadership, faculty, center directors, and research support teams to strengthen pathways from discovery to real-world impact and to advance NYUAD’s innovation mission.

Previously, Rima spent 16 years at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR), where she founded and led the Drug Discovery Program and later served as Head of Therapeutic Innovation and Drug Discovery. In these roles, she oversaw multidisciplinary teams advancing first-in-class small-molecule programs and established high-value public–private partnerships to translate research discoveries into clinical and commercial opportunities. Earlier in her career, she held senior research leadership roles at Eli Lilly and Company in both discovery and process chemistry.

Rima joined NYU Abu Dhabi with extensive expertise in research translation, drug discovery, and innovation management. Her scientific contributions include the co-development of OICR-9429, an open-science chemical probe targeting WDR5 that helped establish a new class of oncology targets and catalyzed significant industry collaboration. She holds a PhD in synthetic organic chemistry from North Carolina State University and completed postdoctoral training at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has held faculty appointments at the University of Toronto, is an inventor on multiple patents, and has authored and co-authored numerous publications at the intersection of chemistry, biology, and translational medicine.