Chris Menchini

Chris currently serves as Associate Director of Intellectual Property and is a registered Patent Agent with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Chris helps review, protect, and commercialize technologies that primarily originate from the engineering and physical sciences at West Virginia University (WVU). In this role, Chris spends time educating faculty, staff, and students on intellectual property protection and affiliated university policies and procedures. Chris also helps WVU researchers realize their technologies in the form of real and virtual prototyping.

Chris has advanced degrees in mechanical and aerospace engineering from WVU. He has a broad background performing translational research and development related to aerospace, defense, energy, and national security on behalf of the Air Force, Navy, Federal Aviation Administration, among others. Prior to joining WVU, Chris spent 12 years with Applied Research Associates, Inc. (ARA) as the technical lead on various multidisciplinary engineering projects. Chris began his career as a research scientist for 3 years with Combustion Research and Flow Technology, Inc. (CRAFT-Tech), developing software and hardware to solve specialized aeropropulsive problems in high performance computing (HPC) environments.