Bringing Entrepreneurship to Biotech Students

Entrepreneurship is on the rise.

Nearly 20 percent of adults founded or were in the process of launching a business in the past three-plus years, according to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. That percentage is the highest since the statistic began being tracked in 1999. 

Danielle Tullman-Ercek, director of Northwestern Engineering's Master of Biotechnology Program (MBP), sees the same growing interest among MBP students. 

"There have always been some students who wanted to do entrepreneurship, but lately it's really caught their attention that you can have an idea and take it all the way through and see it implemented or translated in the real world," she said. "It's an amazing process to watch."

The process is filled with highs and lows. That is why MBP introduced a minor in entrepreneurship to help prepare students for the realities that come with launching a product or business.

The minor is designed for students who want to apply an innovation mindset and entrepreneurial skill set toward their career path, gain the tools and network to take a business idea to the next level, or be an innovator within their chosen industry.

Students must take three credits for the minor. One credit must be a class related to entrepreneurship and one must be a course from the Northwestern Farley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

The final credit must be an experiential course from the following list:

• Engineering Entrepreneurship 
• Innovate for Climate 
• Building a Buzzworthy Brand 
• Consulting for Wearable Tech 
• 490: Product Management 
• Any NUvention course 

NUvention courses allow students to work with interdisciplinary teams and move ideas through the innovation lifecycle. NUvention topics include arts and entertainment, energy and sustainability, media, medical, and transportation mobility.

Prerana Mantri (MBP '21), senior associate scientist at Regeneron, took the transportation mobility course while completing her entrepreneurship minor.

"I had the opportunity to take NUvention and come up with a business model," Mantri said. "Every class (featured) a different entrepreneur (guest speaker). Learning from the people who are already doing what you want to do helped us come up with that business model."

Tullman-Ercek appreciates the value for students to hear from current entrepreneurs. As the co-founder of Opera Bioscience, a startup whose technology uses bacteria to mass-produce proteins, Tullman-Ercek is transparent with students about her entrepreneurial journey. The company has raised more than $1 million in capital and recently took first prize at the Kellogg School of Management's Healthcare Entrepreneurship Business Plan Competition.

Tullman-Ercek is one of dozens of entrepreneurs on the Northwestern campus, and her company is one of eight developed from faculty labs associated with the Center for Synthetic Biology in the last eight years.

"They're getting boots-on-the-ground anecdotes about some of the things that come up when you're trying to start a company," she said. "I think it helps a lot to add some practical knowledge to their experiences."