Prospective Graduate Students
Prospective Graduate Students
Prospective Graduate Students
Innovation: Inside and out
Microsoft, Facebook, and a dozen other innovative ideas came to light in the wee, dark hours at Harvard. (1)
From free mini-MBA seminars (2) to working with faculty members who have founded their own companies (3) to summer internship opportunities at companies like Google (4), IBM, Microsoft, and McKinsey Co., engineering and applied sciences students have many avenues for on-the-job training before they graduate.
Right on campus, budding entrepreneurs can get a boost from the Technology and Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard (TECH) and the emerging Translation Lab.
Both initiatives provide courses and one-on-one consulting for students interested in exploring idea generation and technology transfer.
We also encourage real-world (and off-campus) experiences. Engineering students have been awarded, among others, Weissman scholarships, which enable participants to live and work across the globe. (5)
Moreover, as cultural literacy has become increasingly critical for science and engineering, we’ve made it easier for even S.B. students to have experiences abroad. (6)
In addition to coming up with the next Great Big Idea, we encourage you to heed the advice of a Harvard graduate and now faculty member: “Think of your freedom of choice—of what courses to take, of how to spend your Sunday afternoons, whatever—as a commodity that is precious in and of itself.” (7)
Drug Delivery, Delivery Room, Classroom
So what does being innovative look like ...Drug Delivery
Oluwarotimi “Rotimi” Okunade ’07 spent her summer in Pretoria, South Africa, with Medicine in Need (MEND), a nonprofit company started by faculty members and students at Harvard and aimed at liberating burdened populations from diseases of poverty through advanced drug and vaccine delivery.
Delivery Room
A team composed of engineering undergraduates captured first place in the Harvard Student Agencies’ Center for Enterprise’s Entrepreneurial Contest. In their business plan, the team devised a venture called lono Medical Systems, dedicated to the design and production of a wireless device that can employ passive acoustic measurement techniques to detect and monitor the heartbeat of a human fetus in utero.
Classroom
In ES-147, students from many academic disciplines work on idea translation and ‘artscience,’ attempting to put their dreams into tangible form. McKay Professor of the Practice of Biomedical Engineering David A. Edwards focuses on applying his own ideas and research to real-life problems, and he challenges his students to do the same. In fact, in addition to being a serial entrepreneur, Edwards writes novels.
The latest sensation that came from a bit of classroom brainstorming is Le Whif, a way to inhale all the rich taste of chocolate with none of the calories.
Find Out More
Footnotes
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(1) Part of the code for what became Microsoft’s first commercial program is displayed in Maxwell Dworkin—a building made possible by a donation from Steven Ballmer ’77 and Bill Gates COL ’77 and named for their mothers. |
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(2) In keeping with the real-world emphasis of the noncredit course, stellar faculty members, as well as some of Cambridge’s most successful practicing entrepreneurs from Harvard Business School teach the seminars. |
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(3) Pulmatrix, a start-up that develops products to diagnose, treat, prevent, or inhibit the spread of airborne infectious diseases, grew out of an undergraduate engineering course. |
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(4) Google placed the following ad in the Harvard Square subway station: “[first 10-digit prime found in consecutive digits of e].com” |
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(5) During the summer of Weissman interns worked in a wide range of private and public organizations in business, education, the environment, government, health and medicine, law, media, public service, science, and urban planning. |
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(6) Engineering and applied students have studied in Paris; Durban, South Africa; and Kingston, Jamaica. |
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(7) Harry Lewis ’68, ’74, Harvard College Professor and Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science and former Dean of the College. |

