• Available Technologies
• Resources
  • Our Process
  • Inventors
  • Industry
  • Start-up Ventures
  • Students
  • Policies
  • Forms & Documents
  • Agreement Types
  • Glossary
  • Links
• News and Events
  • News
  • Events
  • Press Releases
  • Success Stories
  • TECHcast
• About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Staff Directory
  • Facts & Figures
  • Portfolio of U-M Startups
  • Annual Reports
  • Clinical Drug Pipeline
  • Device Pipeline

• Our Process
• Inventors
• Industry
• Start-up Ventures
• Students
• Policies
• Forms & Documents
• Agreement Types
• Glossary
• Links

Home > Resources > Students > 2008 Interns

2008 Interns

Please review current and previous internship projects and look at what past interns have to say about their experience:

Ian Dailey, MBA

I am an MBA at the Ross School of Business and I chose the TechStart internship because I'm interested in entrepreneurship and new business development and I wanted experience developing cutting-edge technologies in a energetic environment. I was excited about the opportunity to work on different projects tailored to my interests with inventors and two dynamic groups of peers.

Over the summer, I worked on two completely different projects with two companies. One company, founded by a U of M materials science professor, focused on the commercialization of a unique technology in the area of nanotechnology. Essentially, a material had been invented without a definitive use in mind. Given that none of my teammates had experience in this area, we worked closely with the professor and grad students in his lab to fully understand the technology in order to provide an accurate analysis. Our team tackled this project by researching ten industries and analyzing the markets with the best technological fit and largest market potential. Once the best opportunities were identified, we further assessed these markets with detail paid to the competitive environment, target markets and business models.

The second project varied greatly from the first. This project was with a socially-conscious venture concerned with the comfort and dignity of the elderly and disabled. Several medical devices had been developed by a professor in the school of Art & Design, but the development of these technologies had been stagnating for a couple years. Our TechStart team did a lot of primary research into this industry, particularly amongst consumers to analyze the market segmentation and demand. Our team developed a market entry strategy and recommended business formation based on two of the technologies.

I fully enjoyed my TechStart experience and, given the choice, would do it all over again. I often found that my peers in the MBA program perceived this internship as riskier compared to more traditional internships. In fact, I found the opposite to be true. This program provided me with a unique experience that will surely benefit me during full-time recruiting. No other internship was so uniquely tailored toward my ambitions and no one else can claim to have had a similar summer experience. I was also privileged to be able to work and learn from a group of peers, mentors and inventors that are much smarter than me and have lots of letters following their names. I learned a lot about the world of academics and research (which was truly foreign to me) and I feel I had the opportunity to teach my teammates about marketing and business.

Gregory Boggy, Ph.D. Student, Chemical Engineering

As an engineer, I am interested in advancing technology to have a positive impact on people's lives. Bringing a product to market is necessary to achieve this impact, but this is not a skill that I learned through my academic training. I joined the TechStart program in order to fill this gap in my knowledge and to learn how to evaluate the commercial viability of an early-stage technology.

As a TechStart intern, I learned how to identify suitable markets for a technology, evaluate market potential, and develop a market entry strategy. TechStart also gave me the opportunity to work with excellent students from a variety of backgrounds, meet with local entrepreneurs and inventors, and learn how cutting edge science transitions from the lab to the marketplace.

I worked on three projects over the course of the summer. Each of the groups I worked with had a business student and several technology-oriented students. The complementary skill sets proved essential for moving each of the projects forward.

The first technology I worked on was a microfluidic cell capture chip for measuring CD4+ cell levels in HIV patients. A CD4+ cell count is indicative of the stage of HIV infection and the effectiveness of anti-retroviral drug therapy. Our task on this project was to evaluate the chip's market potential in HIV and in other diagnostic applications and to identify distribution channels.

The second technology I worked on was an organic semiconductor fiber . Depending on the materials used to coat the fiber, it can either emit light, or harvest light energy. These fibers can then be woven together to create light-emitting or light-harvesting textiles. Our task on this project was to find suitable applications for the technology and analyze market potential.

The third technology I worked on was a ceramic nanopowder. This nanopowder has the properties of increased strength and transparency, relative to other ceramics, when processed into bulk material. Our task on this project was to find suitable applications for the nanopowder, analyze market potential, and determine market entry strategy.

TechStart was a great experience and I would recommend it to anybody from a technical background interested in learning about technology commercialization.

Il Yeo

It was at 6 years old that I decided to be a scientist. I chose an engineering undergraduate program and after graduation, and then I found a job as a computer programmer. After 3 years, I was back for more school - a Ph.D. program in the dept. of Mechanical Engineering at University of Michigan. Before the summer of 2008, I was finishing the 4th year of my Ph.D. program. So, science and engineering has really been my life for a long period of time.

At the same time, however, I had strong curiosity about something beyond technology itself - how does it reach the public? I knew that was something that business people did, but "how" they did it wasn't clear to me. I wanted to know how business builds up from the laboratory, and moreover, the way business people think problems through.

The TechStart internship was more than I expected, and it was really an invaluable experience. In the program, I was involved in two projects to find appropriate markets to enter, and to make initial strategies for two University technologies - a fiber-based OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) and nano-scale sapphire powder.

At first, I tended to learn the technologies deeper and deeper - it was the way that I had been trained. But over the period of time, with many meetings and discussions with various people, I have realized the importance of the other aspects. I have learned why great technologies have often failed in the market, while some seemingly mediocre technologies have done quite well, sometimes even changing entire market.

There was also something beyond personal learning. When we had the final meeting with an inventor and gave the final recommendation, he really appreciated our work and thanked us. It was closing yet staring of a positive anticipation of the work I had worked on. Although the technology will take some time to appear in the market, and we do not know how it will eventually turn out, I am really looking forward to find some day that the technology is moving the world forward.

Bhramara Tirupati, Ph.D

As a second year postdoc, I wanted to pursue a career outside of academic research and started looking into alternate careers in science. I became very interested in the technology transfer aspects of R & D and found out about the TechStart internship. Mark Maynard, who runs the program, put together a team of eight students from different backgrounds for the TechStart08. I worked on three projects during the course of the internship with a group of 2-5 interns. The projects were at different stages of development.

The first project was to evaluate the market for a rapid CD4 technology developed here at the University of Michigan. Our team provided the inventor with recommendations for market entry and identified the funding landscape for technology development. On the second project our team researched the prior art landscape to strengthen the IP for the technology, a drug candidate. We worked with the inventor to identify three disease models that may best benefit from the drug candidate and provided the inventor with the market size, market characteristics for each identified disease and a list of pharmaceutical companies involved in making drugs to treat the specific diseases. Working on this project, we learned firsthand the different aspects of drug development process. On the third project, our team had to identify the best method of creating a market for the technology. This project was the most challenging of all three because our team had to provide a plan to develop a market need for a biomarker that was identified by the inventor and a device that is currently being engineered to measure it. Our team identified three disease states that could be predicted by this biomarker and provided the inventor with the first phase of the business plan that would involve acceptance of the test as a standard in the medical community and thus create a market for the technology.

I had a great experience this summer as an intern for the TechStart program. I gained tremendous insight into the business aspects of biotech start-ups. The program accelerated my transition from a typical "bench scientist" to a scientist with business skills within a short span of three months. In addition to providing educational and first hand learning experiences in commercialization pathways for technologies, TechStart08 also provided a chance to learn from our team members. We had biochemists, law students, engineers, neuroscience and business students work together as a team and that made the entire experience rich and dynamic.

Chirs Hart

I came to TechStart from a life science background where most of my activities revolved around a lab bench and work with lab animals/cells, and where my findings were reported at semi-regular lab meetings and yearly conferences. The daily activities of TechStart were a breath of fresh air compared to lab life. Much of the TechStart internship required primary research - interviewing experts, market research & analysis, and due diligence on intellectual property. Research skills learnt from the laboratory translated well to the new setting and I was very comfortable doing the research despite the content being foreign. However, TechStart differed greatly from my lab experience in the degree of daily collaboration. Teams had daily formal and informal meetings where we shared our latest and greatest findings. The level of collaboration made the flow of information between team members spontaneous resulting in much more fluidity in the direction of research and working hypothesis compared with life science research. Not surprisingly, the collaboration between team members expanded to between teams and numerous times over the internship, key insights and leads came from interns not on the team.

I worked on four different projects with potential to become start-ups during the internship. The projects shared a common structure: we initially spent time understanding what the invention was and how it functioned. Then, we studied where it would have the most impact and easiest market entry. Determining impact and market entry varied for each project but all involved market research and competitive analysis, the difference was the source of data i.e. basic medical research journals for 2 projects from the hospital, census data for an elderly care device from the School of Art and Design, and non-governmental agency websites/publications for an Engineering project. The projects also involved varying degrees of intellectual property research with a focus on discovering prior art. All projects demanded an intense teamwork approach and flexibility of thought as we discovered and synthesized new information.

If you are reading this you are probably asking yourself if TechStart is worth 12 weeks of your summer. I acquired an incredible amount of knowledge about the steps needed to commercialize a scientific or design idea. Coming from a science background, I am certain I would have never been exposed to this information from course or lab work. In addition, I relished the opportunity to work in a fundamentally different environment and to interact with immensely talented and diverse individuals from different fields and backgrounds. Thus, if you are even slightly interested in entrepreneurship/commercialization of ideas and want to work on fast-paced, flexible, collaboration-heavy projects then TechStart would be well worth your time. Even if you emerged from the internship deciding that technology transfer is not for you, you would have gained new perspectives on the process lab discoveries go through to become useful to the wider community.