The Health Sciences Innovation and Entrepreneurship (HSIE) Training Program has been awarded a $952,975 grant over five years to continue its pioneering work teaching postdoctoral fellows at UAMS how to commercialize their discoveries.
The program is a partnership between BioVentures, the UAMS Translational Research Institute, and Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. It is led by John Imig, Ph.D., vice president for technology acceleration at BioVentures and professor and chair of the UAMS Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences; and Melody Greer, Ph.D., assistant professor of Biomedical Informatics and graduate of the program’s inaugural class.
“The HSIE Program provides an opportunity for postdoctoral fellows to gain the entrepreneurship training needed to advance biomedical science discoveries into products that improve human health,” Imig said. “I am excited to lead the program alongside our new co-Director, Dr. Melody Greer. A major goal for the next two years is to expand the program to train the next generation of biotechnology entrepreneurs.”
The program’s goal is to broaden the scholar’s vision of using entrepreneurship principles and team science to accelerate biomedical discoveries into improved health outcomes within an academic setting, while also enhancing their readiness for industry, government, and other nonacademic jobs. Upon successful completion, participants are eligible for a Graduate Certificate in Health Science Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
The program has been training entrepreneurs since 2019 with varied interests, including immunosuppression in transplant patients; neurodevelopmental delays in high-risk pregnancies; radiation-induced kidney and cardiovascular diseases; cognition in multiple sclerosis; and more.
Notice of the award came as part of the UAMS Translational Research Institute’s $31.7 million Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) at the National Institutes of Health. The primary award, UM1 TR004909, which totals $26.9 million over seven years, was linked to additional subawards, including T32 TR004918, the grant that funds the HSIE program.
