Biomedical business

[projekktor id=’18350′]

A new program at McMaster University isn’t a science course or a business course, it’s a bit of each. The classes are designed to give drug researchers some business acumen so that when there is a medical breakthrough students can capitalize on it.

McMaster University is known world-wide for its medical research but it hasn’t been able to commercialize that success.  So in January it invited 12 high-performing science students to leave their programs, and start a whole new field of study.

The students in this program also get hands on drug research they wouldn’t normally get in an undergrad program. This is a multi-million dollar lab and it usually only sees grad students. Nancy Mckenzie manager of the Biomedical Discovery and Commercialization program says “not only do they have the science, they have business skills to understand financial decisions, marketing, accounting, the other things that are important as well.”

After two years of combined bio-medicine and business, the students do a one-year grad program. This group is the beta-testing phase, the next class will have 55 students, who are have already written application letters and are going through selection interviews.