Congratulations to our CNS graduate student Drew Sheets (Cohen lab) for earning a Commercialization Fellowship from the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. The program offers students the opportunity to create new ventures around promising research and develop leadership skills during a competitive fellowship.
Announced last year, the Fellowship was created to give PhD students the opportunity to dedicate focused time to exploring entrepreneurship. “With the support of their faculty advisors, these students are working toward bringing some of the University’s most promising research from the lab to the world,” said Samir Mayekar, associate vice president and managing director of the Polsky Center.
The structured, milestone-driven program supports students in translating their research into real-world impact through a comprehensive 8-month experience. It is designed to teach PhD students how to apply and commercialize their research, while giving them and their faculty advisors access to targeted venture creation resources and networking opportunities through the Polsky Center.
“This cohort of Fellows is developing exciting technologies that have the potential to make a tremendous impact on people’s lives. This fellowship is truly a team effort across the Polsky Center to support the students in exploring opportunities to translate their science to the market,” said Ellen Zatkowski, director of science programs and student engagement at the Polsky Center.
Drew Sheets // Drew Sheets is a fifth-year PhD student at the University of Chicago in the Computational Neuroscience program. He began his graduate work in the lab of Sliman Bensmaia working to understand the neural basis of haptic object recognition and apply these findings to design naturalistic neuoprosthetic devices capable of restoring the sense of touch to patients with spinal cord injury. He is currently completing his thesis work in Marlene Cohen’s lab, developing novel methods for early detection of Alzheimer’s disease by harnessing changes in the neural processing of visual information and visually guided behaviors that occur during disease progression. Through the Commercialization Fellowship at the Polsky Center, Drew hopes to develop the necessary skills to bridge the gap between technological innovation and real-world impact.
Click here to read the full story on the Polsky Center website.