Details
Title | Harvard Grid Fellowship |
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School | Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences |
Department/Area | Harvard Grid |
Position Description | Overview The Harvard Grid Fellowship represents an opportunity for inspired, engineering and science-oriented innovators to translate promising research or technologies while honing entrepreneurial skills during a year-long fellowship. Broadly, a researcher will apply with the intent of shaping Harvard research into a viable commercial platform to have global impact. The program is designed to surround fellows with a wide and deep village—market and technical experts, skills and knowledge sprints, mentorship, funding, other entrepreneurs, and more—that combined, creates an ecosystem to help innovators launch successful tough tech ventures that have outsized, positive impact on the world. For the inaugural fellows cohort, target applicants are final-year Harvard SEAS (John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences) PhD students or current Harvard SEAS postdocs working with a SEAS ladder faculty member. Fellowship Design Grid Fellows first co-design project(s) to de-risk their own or other lab-based Harvard research, and at the end of the 12-month fellowship, have all necessary components come together to enable the launch of a new enterprise in a CxO leadership role. ‘De-risking’ refers to the reduction of perceived commercialization risk (risk in transforming a science experiment into a commercial product) to a would-be investor. Those components are, for example, prototypes/minimally viable product, intellectual property, team (+advisers), funding, customers, supply chains, business plan, and a visionary impact roadmap. Fellows will lead a team (often including one or more of a ladder faculty member adviser, external advisers, Harvard research staff and students, and other external contributors), while integrating training/educational components offered by the Harvard Grid. Other outcomes include accelerated translation of research, higher visibility and easy access to tech commercialization career paths, and an increasingly energized translational culture in Harvard science and engineering. Each Grid Fellow will initially work with Grid staff to tailor a year-long schedule and milestones. The fellowship is an in-person, immersive educational experience. It is expected that fellows will work on campus in labs and in cohort environments, such as in the Grid’s Node or the i-lab. In broad strokes, the schedule might look like (M = starting month): First half of fellowship
Second half of fellowship
At the start of the fellowship, fellows will be paired 1:1 with a mentor who is a Director of Business Development (DBD) at the Harvard Office of Technology Development corresponding to the Harvard lab from which the focus technology arises. Fellow/DBD steering meetings are expected to occur monthly. Before or by the end of M2, fellows will also create a Board of Advisers (BoA) with a minimum of one investor adviser (“VC Adviser”) and one industry adviser (“Customer Adviser”). The BoA is minimally constituted by the fellow, VC Adviser, Customer Adviser, and DBD, and will convene monthly during the fellowship. Beyond the minimum, a fellow can augment the BoA at their discretion and also add or substitute advisers as the concept evolves. Interspersed throughout the fellowship are activities, some mandatory, such as:
Towards the end of the fellowship, a selection of elements that come together in M12:
As described, each fellowship project will identify at least two external advisers: customer and investor. The purpose of the advisers is to ensure regular exchange with a friendly customer and an investor so that the first product concept suits specific market needs and the concept will be sufficiently de-risked for funding by M12. There will be some classes and many events to attend, but the focus of all efforts is startup formation. Some days a fellow might spend in the lab diving deeper into results or further developing the concept. On others, fellows might develop consumer personas, assess markets and their scale, or meet with mentors or customers to assess market fit. On still other days, fellows might seek potential co-founders and advisers or meet with founder agreement, terms sheet, or licensing counsel. At the conclusion of M12, the items listed above are +/- executed, and the fusion of all of these elements creates enormous energy from creating and igniting a new entity. |
Basic Qualifications |
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Additional Qualifications |
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Special Instructions | Application 1. CV, including expected PhD graduation date for current students or postdoc appointment end date for current postdocs 2. Supporting letter from a Harvard SEAS ladder faculty member, including support for use of space and resources in the lab if applicable and commitment to support the Fellow’s venture building over 12 months
3. Project Proposal (maximum 4 pages), which should include the following components:
Only non-confidential information should be included. A comprehensive business case supporting the application is not expected though all elements above should be included in the application. Key Evaluation Criteria
SEAS is dedicated to building a diverse and welcoming community, and we strongly encourage applications from historically underrepresented groups. |
Contact Information | Paul Hayre SEC Rm 2.211 John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Harvard Office of Technology Development |
Contact Email | [email protected] |
Equal Opportunity Employer | Harvard is an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, creed, national origin, ancestry, age, protected veteran status, disability, genetic information, military service, pregnancy and pregnancy-related conditions, or other protected status. |
Minimum Number of References Required | 2 |
Maximum Number of References Allowed | 3 |
Keywords | Postdoctoral fellowship, tough tech, research translation, entrepreneurship |
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