Slater Technology Fund Names 8 Student Fellows from Brown, URI
Saturday, March 05, 2011
The Slater Technology Fund, Rhode Island’s state-backed venture capital fund, has picked eight students focused on life sciences from RI-based universities to be part of its Entrepreneurial Fellows Program for this current academic year, its third annual program.
Drawing this year from Brown University and the University of Rhode Island, the Slater Entrepreneurial Fellows Program is a joint operation between the Slater Fund and the Rhode Island branch of the National Science Foundation’s Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). At the same time, Slater announced collaborations with the Rhode Island Science and Technology Advisory Council (STAC) and the Rhode Island Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (RICIE), both of which are involved in the development of Rhode Island’s life sciences research space.
The Fellows
Students picked for the 2010-2011 Fellows Program include:
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTAnthony Assad – Senior at Brown University, majoring in Biology; Donald Bacoat, Jr. – Ph.D. candidate at the University of Rhode Island in the College of Environmental and Life Sciences; Mark Bell – Ph.D. candidate at Brown University in the Dept. of Neuroscience; Jason Chan – 1st-year student at Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School; Rachel Decker – Masters student in Innovation, Management and Entrepreneurship at Brown University; Kenneth Estrellas – Masters student in Artificial Organs, Biomaterials and Cellular Technology at Brown University; Amy Gibson – Final year student in International Engineering (5-year program) at the University of Rhode Island; and Bogdan Prokopovych – Ph.D. candidate at the University of Rhode Island in the College of Business Administration.
Working with STAC and RICIE, the Entrepreneurial Fellows program is expected to help guide the development of policy recommendations by STAC in its efforts to enhance the competitiveness of life sciences research in Rhode Island. The student fellows will help in this effort through surveys of the technology transfer function at leading research institutions in Rhode Island, according to Slater officials. So far, the Entrepreneurial Fellows Program has awarded a total of 13 fellowships in its two-year pilot-scale implementation.
Having recently landed a five-year funding commitment from the Rhode Island NSF EPSCoR program beginning with this academic year, officials say the program could ultimately choose as many as 50 students as Entrepreneurial Fellows.
The Slater Technology Fund has backed a number of RI-based startups, including Sentient BioSciences, and most recently Cardiorobotics Inc.
