Research

Mercedes Rincon, PhD, receives a license at the Invention to Venture Conference in 2015 from Vice President of Research Richard Galbraith, MD, PhD, (left) & UVM Provost and Senior Vice President David Rosowsky, PhD (right). (Photo: LCOM Creative Services)

I-TREP – a University of Vermont-based biomedical entrepreneurship training program – is sponsoring an intensive summer course that will take place at the Larner College of Medicine at UVM June 16 to 23, 2017. This unique course blends medicine, business, and innovation using a team-based learning format and covers topics in ethics, planning, funding, patents, venture capital, and start-ups.   

As part of the course, daily public seminars will take place June 19 to 23 from noon to 1 p.m. in the Given Building’s Carpenter Auditorium. This special seminar series will feature invited top experts in patents, biomedical business development, venture capital funding, and academic-based start-up creation. 

Supported by a $2 million, five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) received by Professor of Medicine Mercedes Rincon, Ph.D. in summer 2016, the UVM-based I-Trep program provides entrepreneurship training for Vermont as well as five other Institutional Development Award (IDeA)-defined states, including Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Alaska, and Puerto Rico. The course’s instructors include Rincon, Erik Monsen, Ph.D., Steven Grossman Endowed Chair in Entrepreneurship and associate professor in the Grossman School of Business, and Corine Farewell, D.V.M., M.B.A, director, UVM Innovations, in the Office of Technology Commercialization.

In addition to Monsen and Farewell, the I-Trep course development team includes Charles Irvin, Ph.D., professor of medicine and associate dean for faculty affairs, who provides the course’s ethics training component, and Tina Thornton, Ph.D., I-Trep coordinator and assistant professor of medicine.

Below is a list of the I-Trep public seminar presentations that accompany the course:

Monday, June 19: Daniel Kolker, Ph.D., Supervisor Patent Examiner, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, on “Patent Basics for Inventors, Entrepreneurs, and Start-Ups”

Tuesday, June 20: Phil Weilerstein, President & CEO, VentureWell, on “Innovation Pathways”

Wednesday, June 21: Tim Shannon, M.D., Venture Partner, Caanan Partners, on “Venture Capital and the World of Biopharmaceutical Start-Ups”

Thursday, June 22: Randolph Noelle, Ph.D., Co-founder, ImmuNext, and Professor, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, on “A Very Long and Winding Road...to Success”

Friday, June 23: John Abele, Co-founder, Boston Scientific, on "Disrupting Healthcare”