“My internship with Emory OTT allowed me to step outside the lab, and into another realm of scientific development,” said Jeremiah Mitzelfelt, a PhD student and Emory OTT intern in 2011. Other former Emory OTT interns feel similar to Mitzelfelt, explaining that Technology Transfer gave them a sense of renewed excitement for scientific innovation. Beyond increased excitement, it also created a new career path in the sciences that allowed them to move outside structured lab research into the fast paced, versatile work of technology transfer.
Most OTT interns are PhD or Post-Doc students looking for a way remain involved in the world of scientific development, but who also desire to step outside the lab where the baseline research of this development was occurring. Dr. Rose Freel says OTT taught her to look at a technology with a wider lens than she was taught during her graduate career. She began to understand that for scientific innovation to have a wider impact, technology developers must evaluate more than just the incidence rates of a disease and the hard science. They have to understand the larger picture and facets of the market and the IP landscape.
Dr. Paul Musille, an intern in 2013, explained that the versatility in technology transfer subject matter was his favorite part of the internship because it allowed him to work on many different scientific projects, which he found very refreshing. “It kept me on my toes,” said another previous intern Patrick Reynolds. He said that OTT taught him to take his developed scientific knowledge from his lab background and transform it into communicable information that individuals with predominantly business or law experience could use to transform the scientific lab research into a marketable product that the general population could put to good use.
Learn more about the intern program on our website.