The Center for Medical Innovation - Innovation Fellows Program is designed to support early-career engineers and scientists with supplemental training to advance translational research and novel medical and life science technologies to address real-world needs. This year-long, non-clinical program offers sequential education on key market readiness topics to increase the fellow’s understanding of their translational research or technology’s commercialization potential. These topics include intellectual property, customer segmentation, market analysis, market adoption, regulatory pathways, reimbursement strategies, commercialization funding mechanisms, and manufacturability. A critical element of the Innovation Fellows (IF) Program is pairing fellows with three mentors: an experienced SME, an innovation-focused academic liaison, and an industry-embedded mentor, resulting in a tri-directional mentoring pathway. Mentors provide technology- and industry-specific guidance to accelerate technology and business development, building the fellow’s entrepreneurial acumen. Through structured training, customer discovery requirements, flipped classroom presentations, and industry mentorship, participants gain the necessary skills to navigate the complex commercialization landscape. Several goals of the programs include the Innovation Fellows' ability to improve their networking and customer discovery interviewing skills, including developing market-focused hypotheses and formulating interview questions; assessing and improving their capability to collaborate across research areas and professions; and assessing their level of interest in technology commercialization and entrepreneurship. Initial outcomes from the program show increased market readiness of participant technologies and expanded network with industry stakeholders.
The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 22, 2025, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 25, 2025