Crossing the Valley of Death: Bridging the Gap Between Research, Translation, Commercialization and Personal Reward at Tufts University

Description:  The NSF spends over $8B/year on research, and the NIH over $45B. In many cases, while the research contributes to our fundamental knowledge, there is often a gap between: 1) the research results, 2) the translation of the findings into a solution to a societal problem, and 3) the creation of a business and financial entity that is investable as well as personally and materially rewarding.

At Tufts Gordan Institute  – including the Derby Entrepreneur Center - we’ve been building our innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem with specific programs focused on accelerating the translation of your research to commercialization. Examples include the NSF I-Corps program, the MS in Innovation and Management graduate program, and other graduate courses and certificate programs.

This talk will share examples from these courses and show how faculty and DVM and other graduate students at Cummings might tap these resources for their own current and future ventures.

Speaker: Kevin Oye, Executive Director, Professor of the Practice, Gordon Institute, School of Engineering

Kevin is the Executive Director of the Tufts Gordon Institute, the Director of the M.S. in Innovation and Management Program, and a Professor of Practice. He joined the Tufts faculty with over 35 years of experience leading product development, corporate strategy, and merger and acquisition teams. Previously, he was the Vice President of Systems and Technology at Sycamore Networks, Inc., where he led a global team that created and delivered optical networks for customers such as NTT, Vodafone, Sprint, and the U.S. Department of Defense. He currently mentors at the non-profit EforAll business accelerator and provides advisory and consulting services to startups and corporations.