One of the University of Tennessee Research Foundation’s four key mission areas is encouraging an entrepreneurial culture across the UT System.
At the UT Health Science Center, two UTRF team members support this mission by teaching the next generation of entrepreneurs in the redesigned “Entrepreneurship in Pharm/Biomedical Science” graduate course, listed as PHAC 832 and available to graduate students throughout the system.
Throughout the spring semester, UTRF Vice President Todd Ponzio and Staff Attorney James Parrett are providing students with a comprehensive understanding of health technology and entrepreneurship by covering business fundamentals, regulatory considerations, intellectual property basics, and insights into future trends. The course is project-oriented, meaning students take their graduate research and consider how they would translate it into a viable product or startup.
We are encouraging students to think entrepreneurially and spread that among their lab mates, faculty advisors and others to move their technologies out of the lab or form startups,” said Parrett. “Their research has been several years of their life. From the UTRF perspective, it would be a home run for us if they could move their work into a practical application.”
Many students may have heard about IP or know the basics of moving a product to market but have yet to have the time or opportunity to explore all the facets of commercializing research.
We’ve got a great group of students,” said Parrett. “They’re engaged, and I think they’re finding it very eye-opening because this is the stuff they don’t typically talk about in school. We’re watching people discover the entrepreneur bug.”
Ponzio acknowledged that many doctoral students will not go into research-track positions after graduating. His goal is to contribute to the success of UTHSC students by equipping them with crucial business acumen to land quality jobs outside academia.
Nontraditional career paths have become the new traditional,” said Ponzio. “We’re making our students much more competitive for the jobs of the future. This course gives them a competitive advantage to get better positions and become leaders in their field.”
According to Ponzio and Parrett, each class could be a semester-long course. They don’t shy away from going “into the weeds” on complex, fast-paced topics like artificial intelligence in health technology or strategic IP considerations for startups.
We’re going to have to update this course every time we teach it because each subject is an ever-evolving field,” said Ponzio.
Beyond promoting the graduate entrepreneurial ecosystem, the course is also designed to empower students and make them more aware of available resources should they enter a full-time faculty position, particularly in the UT System.
I would love for this class to be a touch point for anyone to get involved with UTRF,” said Ponzio. “We’d love to demystify the commercialization process—take some of the scariness out of it. That starts with a conversation and a little bit of education.”