The OTT licensing internship, according to its coordinator Catherine Murari-Kanti, PhD, is about “setting up a pipeline for future licensing associates and the future of tech transfer by making sure we have excellently trained people who can take the reins over the next few years.” The program, aimed at graduate students both within the Emory community and outside of it, offers interns a look at a fulfilling career outside the lab – one that sits at the exciting intersection of science, business, law, and innovation.
What to Expect
OTT licensing internship coordinator Catherine Murari-Kanti (l) and 2023-24 intern Jakob Habib.
The program commences in the last week of August, where the students complete a six-week tech transfer boot camp. Five of those weeks are instructional, and the students meet in-person every Friday from 8:00 a.m. to noon, where office associates show them the ropes. During the last week of the bootcamp, the interns present their commercialization evaluation report (CER) for an assigned technology to the entire OTT team.
Then, interns go through various rotations with the licensing associates and marketing specialists to learn skills related to evaluating technologies, navigating the licensing process, and writing non-confidential summaries. The internship program concludes in mid-May, when interns either leave to finish their academic program, embark on their professional career, or stay and work with OTT over the summer. Some PhD candidates will also choose to do the internship for another year if they are still interested in learning more about tech transfer.
Prep for a Tech Transfer Career and Beyond
OTT interns gain real-world experience to prepare them for whatever’s next. “I want my interns to be successful wherever their career may take them, so I like to have seminars on the other aspects of tech transfer so they can also learn about things like license compliance and finances,” Murari-Kanti explained.
In addition to technology-specific skills, she noted that the interns get educated on legal matters like reading and understanding patent claims and protections. They also learn to liaise with faculty members and the business community, gaining essential skills like negotiating, communicating complicated science to a general audience, and writing tech briefs that pique the interest of the investors without revealing confidential information.
Soon, Murari-Kanti hopes to have many other seminars and invite guest speakers in different fields from whom the interns can learn. “Also, if [the interns] are still trying to figure out their careers and they’re not sure about the academic route, I want them to be exposed to different career possibilities within the field of tech transfer,” she said.
An Opportunity to Make an Impact
Interns past and present gather at OTT’s annual event.
The OTT licensing internship is ideal for graduate students with a background in science who’ve found that they need more variety in their work – as opposed to working on the same problem for years, as lab researchers often do. Tech transfer offers a compromise, exposing industry professionals to the best of all kinds of science. According to Murari-Kanti, “the intellectual satisfaction of being part of moving technology from a lab at Emory to a hospital where it can actually help people is just so rewarding.”
More than the professional skills they gain in this program, OTT interns learn how to bridge science with industry, helping to translate ideas from the lab into potentially life-saving products for the patients that need them. As Murari-Kanti put it, “the internship program is very close to my heart personally because I really enjoy seeing the next generation take up the responsibility of moving the technologies from the lab to the market.”
What Past Interns Have to Say
Christina Lester (OTT intern 2023-2024)
Current position: Tech Transfer and Patent Specialist for the National Cancer Institute
How OTT helped: Before Christina was hired as a full-time employee at the National Cancer Institute, she completed a fellowship there, and she credits her OTT internship experience as being instrumental in her program acceptance. She was able to form valuable connections at Emory. (Her current boss was a former OTT intern!)
Fond internship memory: The OTT Award Ceremony for the inventors where she was able to meet the inventor and interact with the other interns.
Jhordan Rogers (OTT intern 2024-2025)
Current position: Participant in Patent Pathways, which helps professionals gain experience and find a career in patent law. He is also currently interviewing with firms.
How OTT helped: OTT’s network of alums opened a lot of connections within the IP landscape. “I don’t think I would have even had a seat at the table without this experience,” he said. The interns also gain the skill of critically analyzing new technology that might be outside of their range of expertise or past experiences, which helps to set them apart from other candidates in the IP job market.
Fond internship memory: The bootcamp at the beginning of the program, where all of the interns got to know each other. “It was great because we got to physically meet the people we had previously interacted with virtually.”
Lauren Simmons (OTT intern 2023-2024)
Current position: Fellow at the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases
How OTT helped: The internship “gave me a feel for technology transfer.” She was a professor during the internship, but she was fatigued from teaching and wanted a career transition. She discovered tech transfer and applied for the OTT internship, where she learned to evaluate different types of technology. This proved helpful because “everything I did during the internship, I’m doing now.”
Fond internship memory: “The whole internship was just a great experience!”
Anushka Shinde (OTT intern 2023-2024)
Current position: Licensing Associate at the Office of Research Commercialization at Texas Tech University
How OTT helped: “I’d say that the internship was really primal in terms of me being an eligible candidate for [my current] role.” Also, she was able to observe agreement meetings, which was helpful in giving her a sense of how the whole process in a tech transfer office works.
Fond internship memory: “I was a student at Georgia Tech, and you need a pass to enter Emory buildings, so every Friday, Catherine would be waiting for us to make sure we could enter the building. She’d get us coffee and snacks for breakfast, and I think those were really nice moments because I got to meet people around the office.”
Eeman Uddin (OTT intern 2024-2025)
Current position: Global Operations Leadership Development (GOLD) Associate at Johnson & Johnson
How OTT helped: The internship is “a great place to learn about what happens when you’re taking in an idea and realistically trying to bring it to the market.” The interns get a lot of experience with applying the skills they learn, from marketing to IP creations to reading contracts between companies and inventors. “I was able to use my experiences at OTT to get into the GOLD program, which is similar to the OTT internship in how it rotates through specialties.”
Fond internship memory: “I specifically loved connecting with inventors and understanding what they wanted to do with their ideas and how they wanted to facilitate [commercialization].”
Faheem Ullah (OTT intern 2024-2025)
Current position: Technology Transfer Specialist for Innovation Ventures at Thomas Jefferson University
How OTT helped: “The technology transfer internship helped me a lot to understand the responsibilities of a tech transfer specialist. It has helped me a lot! I feel like a lucky person for being able to complete this internship before taking on my current, real position.”
— Jenna Woods