A smartphone app that can easily and quickly detect jaundice in newborns. A paste that helps fight periodontal disease. An injection that improves the treatment of glaucoma. A wireless system that helps combat hospital infections. A putty-like substance to repair bone. An inexpensive solar-powered water pump for use in developing countries.
What do all of these innovations have in common? They were developed in the research lab by engineering graduate students, who have delivered or are delivering them to the marketplace.
These are examples of the fruits of “translational research,” or engineering conducted at the lab bench with an eye toward rapidly getting it to customers or, in a medical context, to the bedside. This type of research is gaining ground in engineering schools, reflecting the growing push to tailor graduate study “to be more driven by real-world experience — designing real systems and building things that work,” says Christos Cassandras, head of the division of systems engineering at Boston University.
“We believe it’s crucial to help our students take their research from the classroom to the marketplace,” says Gary May, dean of the College of Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “And our students are demanding this.”
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Building in such instruction on the business and legal processes of bringing an invention to life reflects an understanding that venturing out of the lab takes many engineers “out of their comfort zone,” notes Thomas Zurbuchen, associate dean for entrepreneurial programs at the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan.
Motivated also by the prospect of research funding for promising technologies and royalties from successful technology transfers, grad schools are adding entrepreneurship and other business classes to the tech curriculum, and lining up collaborating companies or labs inside and outside the university.
At Michigan, for example, the College of Engineering’s Center for Entrepreneurship offers classes that range from how to create a prototype to how to obtain a patent. In 2014, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology launched a program called Start6 to teach the nuts and bolts of becoming entrepreneurs.
Teamwork is a big part of the picture, too, both inside and outside the university.
Clinical collaborators have become an important part of the program at Georgia Tech. While Chris Hermann, 30, was earning his dual M.D.-Ph.D. in bioengineering at Emory University and Georgia Tech, he teamed up with a surgeon at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta on a dissertation project: developing a therapy other than surgery to improve the management of babies born with a condition that causes their skull bones to grow too fast.
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He also happened to mention that he was interested in hand hygiene. An introduction to the head of the hospital’s ICU eventually led Hermann to test different wireless technologies to remind medical staff to scrub between patients. Today, Clean Hands Safe Hands is a growing Atlanta-based business, and Hermann is president and CEO while still pursuing his medical degree from Emory.
“One of the biggest reasons for our success was that we were able to get out in the real world and work with nurses and physicians,” he says.
One good way to get real-world experience as well as feedback on a project’s practical applications is to enter a competition, says Cassandras. In 2014, a team from BU won second prize in the annual Smarter Planet Challenge, a national contest sponsored by IBM and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers for student teams working on solutions to issues such as waste management and greenhouse emissions that plague cities. Their winning technology: an app that allows cities to detect and classify road bumps and potholes in order to efficiently do repairs.
The support of a university-funded incubator can be crucial to helping students navigate the “Valley of Death,” the time between doing their research and having a product that will attract investors. Budding entrepreneurs get not only a space to work but also access to experts, mentors and even seed-stage funding. Success stories spawned by Michigan’s one-semester TechArb incubator, for instance, include Sidecar, the instant ride-sharing company that recently received a $15 million infusion from investors.
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Many students won’t see such rapid results, of course, warns Steven Little, chair of the department of chemical and petroleum engineering at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering.
“My stuff is so preliminary I probably won’t see it commercialized,” acknowledges Nicole Ostrowski, a 28-year-old from Warren, Pennsylvania, who got her undergraduate degree in engineering from Pitt and will complete her Ph.D. in bioengineering there this year. She is developing a magnesium phosphate-based putty that will facilitate bone regeneration.
Still, she is right where she wants to be — in the middle of the action. “You see the struggles. You see the progress. You see the excitement,” she says. Anyone interested in translational research should look for a department and a principal investigator “very supportive of entrepreneurship and commercialization,” she recommends.
This story is excerpted from the U.S. News “Best Graduate Schools 2016” guidebook, which features in-depth articles, rankings and data.
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