Tech transfer expert taking the leap from Boston to Los Angeles.

THE University of Southern California's newly minted tech-transfer office lured Krisztina Holly away from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she was executive director of MIT's Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation.

Holly was named executive director of the USC Mark and Mary Stevens Institute for Technology Entrepreneurship and Commercialization. The USC Stevens Institute is designed to work with university research groups to help launch startup companies, license intellectual property, and help university entrepreneurs seek venture capital funding.

The institute sprung from a 2004 gift of $22 million from USC alum Mark Stevens, partner at venture capital giant Sequoia Capital.

Holly is the institute's first executive director, and expects to be hiring a staff of up to 25 over the next two years. She will be responsible for reaching out to venture capital and angel investor communities, and working with entrepreneurs from USC laboratories across the university, including the Viterbi School of Engineering, the School of Cinema-Television and Keck School of Medicine.

Holly earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in mechanical engineering from MIT, and was the first executive director of its tech innovation institute.