Interfaces are where the action happens.  From developing nano-enabled catalysts to designing biochemical sensors, interfacial chemistry determines success.  Interfaces are also profoundly important to shaping one’s career, be it in industry, academia, government, a non-profit, or somewhere in between.  The industry-academia interface can be particularly appealing for graduate students and post-doctoral scholars.  Industry brings unique real-world challenges to academia, and academic research leads to new discoveries on which future industries are based.  Although industrial and academic pursuits are highly complementary, they can differ from one another in fundamental ways.  Understanding these differences and their underlying motivations are essential to building a successful career at the industry-academia interface.  Example careers include performing industry-sponsored research, managing industrial affiliates programs (IAPs), protecting intellectual property (IP), facilitating technology transfer, perfecting legacy products or even launching new ones through a start-up venture.  Establishing a career at this interface requires the development of skills that are not readily acquired through coursework and research.  Rather, they require hands-on industry experience, mentorship, openness to new ideas, willingness to take risks and fail forward, patience, and grit.  From founding NanoSafe, Inc., a startup dedicated to the safe and responsible use of nanotechnology, to nurturing an “innovation ecosystem” within Virginia Tech’s NSF-funded NanoEarth user facility – the speaker will discuss the growing importance of careers at the industry-academia interface as well as the opportunities and challenges such careers present to recent graduates, post-docs, and faculty.

Careers at the industry-academia interface: Insights from sustainable nanotechnology and entrepreneurship

2019 Fall National Meeting

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