Joint & Bone Initiative

External Opportuntities for Trainees

Western Medical Innovation Fellows

Innovation fellowship programs have been developed in the United States to immerse highly talented young scientists, engineers and clinicians in training and research environments that build innovation leaders and create novel medical technologies. Fellows begin in the classroom, learning topics relevant to business and technology commercialization, prior to being immersed in clinics, where they identify market needs. They then develop and prototype solutions by working with researchers, clinicians and technology transfer offices to generate new intellectual property. Alumni of these programs have become leaders in industry, research and health care, and many have formed new companies.

The Western Medical Innovation Fellowship - the first-of-its-kind in Canada - was established in partnership with the University of Minnesota Innovation Fellows program in 2015. Highly qualified individuals are recruited from recent Western PhD graduates, medical students and residents, and Canadian applicants to the Minnesota program. Mitacs is a partner of the Fellowship program through its support of postdoctoral training and research collaborations. Other partners include the Western Bone and Joint Institute’s Collaborative Training Program in Musculoskeletal Health Research. Fellows are paid similar to postdoctoral fellows for the 10.5-month program, which consists of:

Boot camp (University of Minnesota Medical Devices Center)

WORLDiscoveries Week (Western Research Park)

Clinical Immersion (London Health Sciences Centre and St. Joseph's Health Care)

Design and Prototyping (across all partner sites)

Training and experience fellows receive will serve to de-risk the commercialization/start-up path by equipping them with relevant knowledge, connections to mentors, industry partners and investors, and their having already identified and tested markets for their innovations.

Full details are available at: http://www.uwo.ca/research/funding/students/MIF.html

MaRS

Entrepreneurship 101

Interested in learning more about entrepreneurship? Looking to start a new venture? Look no further!

Entrepreneurship 101 is Canada’s largest live and online entrepreneurship course. Aimed at technology entrepreneurs and social innovators, the course covers the fundamentals of starting and building a new venture.