Technology Transfer and Entrepreneurship (Discontinued) - Volume 4, Issue 2, 2017

Developing a Masters in Biotechnology entrepreneurship degree program based in a biology department provided some complex challenges. These challenges include convincing the faculty that the level of scientific competence of the graduating students is appropriate for a Masters' degree in that discipline. Since these degrees also feature biotechnology entrepreneurship, the business and entrepreneurship related expertise also needs to be addressed. The experience at Case Western Reserve University is a case study in how these challenges can be addressed so that the department granting the degree is comfortable with both the quality and outcome for the students. The program and the outcomes for the students and the department are described.

The Designated Emphasis in Biotechnology (DEB) graduate program is the largest crossdisciplinary doctoral program at UC Davis, encompassing 29 disciplines and training over 200 students in bioentrepreneurship annually. Core coursework includes foundational training in biotechnology and team science, a bioentrepreneurship seminar series, training in bioethics and an industry internship. Personalized mentoring and professional development activities that emphasize leadership, science communication and entrepreneurship have been keys to the growth and success of the DEB, including the recruitment and retention of ~20% students from underrepresented backgrounds. Institutional support has allowed DEB program directors to build and sustain this unique model program through extramural training grant awards and the cultivation of public-private partnerships. A case study of the DEB is presented to encourage the development of similar cross-disciplinary doctoral programs in bioentrepreneurship.

Background: After many decades, entrepreneurship education is now frequently embedded in universities globally. Even so challenges often remain. In a factor-driven economy like Egypt, the twin concepts of entrepreneurship education and the entrepreneurial university are somewhat new. Accordingly, this research explores, through a study of five of the country's universities, the level of understanding of the twin concepts and the challenges the universities encounter when attempting to implement them. Conclusion: The study concludes that only one of the 5 Egyptian universities studied may be regarded as an entrepreneurial university and that although all of them offer programmes in entrepreneurship and have plans to extend their involvement, they are facing numerous challenges. The article makes recommendations for both the universities and the Egyptian Government, and argues for a national policy that requires the country's universities both to become entrepreneurial and to introduce entrepreneurial education to all students. The findings have relevance for economies other than Egypt that are seeking to compete in the global knowledge economy.

The Australian public has long been demanding the implementation of government policies that will lead to profits from Australian know-how remaining in Australia. To achieve this competitiveness in the biotechnology industry, Australia's education system for science students needs to be sufficiently adequate to produce graduates that, are scientifically competent to generate the technology opportunities, have the business acumen to map the commercialisation pathway, and have the entrepreneurial mindset to both drive and enable business success. The problem is that science students at all levels are generally not inherently business minded and most do not realize that they should play an active entrepreneurial role in the translation of their future research findings. As such, it is one thing to design a program to teach business skills and entrepreneurship to science students and scientists and it is another thing to get them to sign up. Since 1999, various education models have been attempted at UNSW to teach business and entrepreneurship to biotechnology students. All have had some success but few have been sustainable due to structural, marketing, funding and political issues. The current Australian Federal Government has launched numerous initiatives aimed at stimulating entrepreneurship in science based industries. New and revised grant funding schemes are obliging universities to become engaged with industry and to encourage entrepreneurship amongst the student body and faculty. Infrastructure and associated funding is being put in place to assist start-ups access funding and launch into global markets. Perhaps the major gap that still needs to be addressed is not the provision of adequate program offerings but the failures in our marketing strategies to effectively engage high school students in the relevance of entrepreneurship to scientific translation and to encourage those who are entrepreneurial minded and interested in science to actually study science at university.

Bioentrepreneurship education programs are rarely launched as fully developed in standard business or science academic programs or curricula; historically, it has been more common for programs to start with a single relevant course elective within a non-entrepreneurship master's program, and then add a complement of courses over time, as the program expands. This eventually grows into a bioentrepreneurship concentration. This paper provides two case studies in bioentrepreneurship concentrations. These were developed at two different university settings, within highly differentiated master's programs and with dissimilar pedagogies. The motivation for this paper is to exemplify that there are many paths to creating successful graduate bioentrepreneurship education programs, and that it can start with the development of a single course. The two case studies reflect the Johns Hopkins University's Master of Science in Biotechnology with its two optional concentrations, one in Biotechnology Enterprise and the other in Regulatory Affairs, and the University of San Francisco's Master of Science in Information Systems and its optional concentration in Biotechnology. Comparative pedagogies, admissions criteria, degree requirements, courses, faculty and student profiles, etc. are included, along with historical perspective.

Sweden is one of the world's most innovative countries and has a long tradition of strong life science innovations. Although Sweden has many small life science companies, there is an apparent lack in growth of these firms. A need was identified for professionals that could bridge the science and business aspects of small life science companies to help them grow. As a response to the identified need, this study will describe the start and subsequent development of a Master's program in bioentrepreneurship at Karolinska Institutet. The aim of this program is to educate and train science students to become future leaders in the life science field. The focus of the program is on corporate entrepreneurship rather than to create new business. For that reason, a large part of the program is dedicated to student-corporate alliances. This is undertaken through practical training in a company setting by addressing real business challenges.

Translational medicine is a complex and multidisciplinary network of activities that requires a large number of different competencies. There is a high demand of people with the necessary skills to successfully coordinate these processes. These skills range from understanding scientific and regulatory processes to intellectual property and entrepreneurial related aspects. While it has become clear that new programs are needed to educate such specialists, not many programs addressing this demand are currently being offered. In this review, we will discuss the need for translational and entrepreneurial medicine and its challenges, the importance of educating people with very unique skills to embrace these challenges and discuss available educational programs in translational medicine in terms of their curriculum, but also pedagogical concepts. Finally, we will present a new program in translational and entrepreneurial medicine, which we are developing at the newly created Swiss Institute for Translational and Entrepreneurial Medicine.

Graduate bioentrepreneurship education programs are sufficiently new that little has been researched concerning gender differences. This paper is a case study of the Professional Science Masters (PSM) in Biotechnology at the University of San Francisco, and an analysis of 95 students in five cohorts during the period 2012-2016. Student gender differences are presented in a number of ways, including undergraduate GPAs, GRE scores prior to application, cohort acceptance profiles, dropout-transition-failure rates, prior work experience, and post-degree employment figures. Female students were somewhat more successful than men in completing the degree program, and 100% of all graduates were fully employed in the biotechnology industry post-degree, or accepted into full-time PhD programs. Gender differences were also determined using the GLAS project, the Gunn-Lorton Attitudinal Surveys, which measures confidence levels in a variety of STEM tasks. The major finding of this paper is that males were more comfortable than females to a statistically significant degree with Transitional Technology, i.e., smartphones and computer applications, and the Internet. No gender differences were detected in attitudes regarding science and mathematics, while both genders registered low comfort with high mathematics and tasks with no science, technology or mathematics. Future research includes comparisons of PSM students will all graduate students in the GLAS database, including non-bioentrepreneurship students. Further studies are required to determine the need for Transitional Technology skills, both in bioentrepreneurship graduate work and in subsequent employment in the biotechnology industry.

Background and Objective: The goal of biotechnology is to develop and commercialize research discoveries, so in addition to strong science courses, the Johns Hopkins University Center for Biotechnology Education (CBE) developed bioentrepreneurship, enterprise and regulatory science degrees. Method: This paper describes the evolution of the biotechnology enterprise, entrepreneurship and regulatory science master's degrees in the Center for Biotechnology Education (CBE) at Johns Hopkins University. CBE offers education from early stage research through commercialization. This paper focuses in particular on the Masters in Biotechnology Enterprise and Entrepreneurship and the Master of Science in Regulatory Science that grew from concentrations in the Master of Science in Biotechnology. Results: The initial biotechnology programs were developed over two decades ago in 1992, and has been used as a model for similar programs at other institutions, including its evolution to on-line curricula [1]. The programs are all grounde Conclusion: As the degrees were being developed the programs began experimenting with online education and eventually all biotechnology enterprise, entrepreneurship and regulatory science programs are now offered fully online. Students have come from all seven continents.