Dr. Tata has been with Creative Works since its inception in 1996 and was selected as its first director based upon his background not only with academics (his Ph.D. is in Egyptology) but also due to his experience as a software entrepreneur.
In his position as director, he acts as intermediary between the academic interests of the faculty, the commercial interests of business, and the concerns of the university. He helps establish changes in the current intellectual property policy. He lends expertise to the decision-making process to determine which projects should be funded with university resources. He works directly with faculty and staff to help them develop creative works so as to properly prepare them for commercial use. He is responsible for the commercialization of all intellectual property developed by the university faculty. He identifies creative works that are appropriate for marketing and distribution and actively market and distribute them. He develops relationships with industry and negotiates contracts and other agreements with private enterprises.
Dr. Tata is also a member of the BYU Expedition to Fag el Gamous in Egypt. His specialty is textile analysis.
Prior to joining Brigham Young University, Dr. Tata, was the Chairman and founder of Taras Development Corporation, a software company that developed and marketed a universal teaching machine for Computer Based Training and Evaluation. Dr. Tata was also the founder and president of TranSoft International, Inc., a company that specialized in the localization of software for Fortune 500 companies plus the creation of dictionaries, spellers, and machine translation programs. Dr. Tata was successful in licensing these programs to companies such as Inso Corporation, Globalink, Inc., Corel, Inc., and Novell, Inc. He received his B.S. and M.A. from Brigham Young University and his Ph.D. from the University of Utah.