The course is delivered in four sessions that focus in:
- The Commercialization Path,
- Intellectual Property (IP) and Protection,
- Commercialization Skills and Capital Raising Skills,
- Collaboration, Networking, and Marketing.
Within these sessions, students learn from and interact with a variety of industry professionals ranging from Technical Transfer Office Directors to successful Entrepreneurs and Investors, depending on each iteration's scheduled speaker list. Students themselves come from a variety of professional backgrounds including but not limited to MD’s, PHD’s, PharmD’s, MBA’s, MPH’s, and MS’s.
However, having a professional background is not required and a significant portion of our participants are graduate and undergraduate level students seeking to further their understanding of the commercialization process. As of date, the course has assisted over 50 individuals who are at various stages of their product development and commercialization process.
This course offering is made possible via the National Institutes of Health Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) aware (UT2GM130166) from the National Institute of general Medical Sciences (NIGMS). The ASCEND Hub aims to promote this course in the 7 western IDeA states (NM, ID, AK, HI, MT, NE, WY).