Are you a Chemistry major / specialist at UofT Mississauga and interested in growing your entrepreneurial skills in the lab, and in business?
Life sciences is an ever expanding field where research can lead to an infinite number of spin-off’s and commercialization opportunities.
Work alongside global leaders in medicinal chemistry, Professor Patrick Gunning and his team, while learning and b
Find more details about Entrepreneurial Chemistry Research Opportunity Program at UofT Mississauga below and register here!
CHM399Y – Entrepreneurial Chemistry
(with Professor Patrick Gunning & ICUBE UTM)
Course Offerings: Summer 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018
Course Overview:
Development of therapeutic and diagnostic tools with commercial potential involves a variety of aspects that have to be considered in the early R&D stages. Current project focuses on the development of a class of small molecules for commercialization as a diagnostic agent for Alzheimer’s Disease and bacterial infections, and a second class of small molecules for commercialization as a therapeutic in highly aggressive cancers, including acute myeloid leukemia, medulloblastoma and glioblastoma. The project entails assessment of the idea and chemical structure for novelty, market assessment, survey of literature for most promising applications, compound synthesis and evaluation, patenting strategy, identification of partners and collaborators. By the end of the project, the student will have a good understanding of requirements for chemistry-based innovation and entrepreneurship ventures.
This role also involves an element of gaining a start-up experience while working alongside start-ups at ICUBE UTM. While there is a strong lab and science component, candidates will undergo entrepreneurial training at ICUBE UTM including patenting, market research and other fields.
Student Activities:
One or more activities from each of the following sections will be performed by the student:
1) Wet lab: NMR, MS, organic synthesis, SPR, ITC, Fluorescence polarization, HPLC, column chromatography, peptide synthesis.
2) Online tools and software: ChemDraw, Scifinder, scientific literature search engines, patent search engines,
3) Literature and data searches and evaluation: academic peer-reviewed publications, patents, commercial spec sheets, industry reports, market analysis reports.
Students will gain a start-up experience by attending specialized entrepreneurship training at ICUBE UTM and working with start-ups and on their own venture concepts. Training will be alongside ICUBE companies for approximately 4 hours per week exploring entrepreneurial topics of:
1) Business Initialization – Learn to Fail Fast to Succeed
2) Business Modeling – What works and what hasn’t
3) Exploring and Understanding Markets – Who, What, Why
4) Resources: People & Money
5) Building a Business Plan
6) Funding: Couch Surfing or Condos
Students will be responsible for participating in entrepreneurial activities with cross-program collaborative teams in ICUBE and in computer science. Participants will then engage in a series of surveys and activities about their experiences and propensities to starting their own companies. Students will journal about their experiences and track their tasks in ICUBE’s online task management system.
The ROP student will have excellent grades in chemistry, be energetic and engaging and have a desire to explore and grow in the entrepreneurial space.
Please note: ROP’s are a Y course (1 full credit) in a single semester, register here!
