UC Davis Graduate School of Management students participated in the BioMedical and Engineering Entrepreneurship Academy July 9 to July 11, 2014. The academy is an intensive program integrating lecture, exercises and individual projects. Participants work to identify, design and validate market opportunities for their research.
The event connects students, researchers and faculty with industry representatives and investors assembled some of the university’s largest departments. The event is co-sponsored by the UC Davis College of Engineering, School of Medicine, School of Veterinary Medicine and the Office of Research.
“I saw a real opportunity to make it more organized, more supported, so that we don’t have these successes by accident,” said Michael Lairmore, dean of the veterinary school.
Lairmore helped launch the program after connecting with Andrew Hargadon, academy founder and faculty director of the UC Davis Child Family Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The idea is to guide scientists behind the university’s most promising research who “don’t know what to do. Do they publish and move on, start a company, sell to another company? What is the right path? And if moving out to commercialization is the right path, what do they do next?”
The Biomedical and Engineering Entrepreneurship Academy is one of several academy programs that operate as three-day intensive workshop. Other subjects include agricultural and clean technologies and a broader UC-wide focus.
This year’s highlighted research included drugs to treat Friedreich’s ataxia, neurosurgery equipment and a gel to enhance stem cell treatment. Forty-three undergraduates, graduate and doctoral students, postdoctoral researchers and faculty attended the event. The program operates within the university’s conference center and alumni center.