From Interns to Employees: Duke Trainees Find Full-Time Home at OTC
At the Duke University Office for Translation & Commercialization (OTC), the team is working to bring technologies out of the university and into reality – be it through traditional patenting and licensing pathways or through start-up creation with Duke New Ventures (DNV) and investing with Duke Capital Partners (DCP).
But behind each technology is an innovator with a vision, and so much of the commercialization journey is not just developing the invention but nurturing the entrepreneurial talent of Duke employees.
Demonstrating a commitment to talent development, OTC runs several student and trainee programs: OTC Fellows help evaluate and market technologies, New Venture Fellows help develop business plans for potential start-ups, and DCP Associates help screen and conduct diligence on investment opportunities.
All three programs have grown over the past few years to provide deeper hands-on experience. And this investment is bearing fruit: the skills gained by participants have been so valuable that, in the past year, OTC hired three trainees as full-time employees.
Aki Min joined OTC as a Technology Marketing Associate, while Daniel Luo is Assistant Director and Cary Ritter is Senior Assistant Director at DCP. Their journeys demonstrate how Duke supports entrepreneurial students in unique ways.
Destination: Duke
All three found something special at Duke: top notch science paired with wonderful mentorship.
“Duke was my first interview for grad school,” Min said. “I was so nervous that first day.”
His eventual PhD advisor, Assistant Professor of BME and Neurobiology Michael Tadross, made a point to connect during the welcome dinner. “Talking to him, I felt so at ease,” Min said. “He made me feel so much more comfortable about the whole process.”
Min joined the Tadross lab, and dove into researching how antianxiety medications work in the brain. Meanwhile, Luo had joined Associate Professor of Radiation Oncology Scott Floyd’s team as a postdoc, researching DNA damage in cancer and screening for new brain cancer drugs.
The high quality of the research also attracted Luo, but again the people were a deciding factor. Floyd suggested moving Luo’s postdoc interview from a Wednesday to a Friday so Luo could make a weekend of it and spend more time with family locally – a gesture Luo appreciated.
“Duke was the only place I applied for as a postdoc,” Luo said. “I just wanted to be here.”
After a couple years at a corporate law firm in New York, Ritter did graduate and postdoctoral work at Duke, which included inventing a new material. “It has these cool properties where it changes color when you’ve manipulated it in some way – when you stretch it, when you touch it, that kind of thing,” Ritter said.
After completing her PhD with Professor of Chemistry Stephen Craig, Ritter wanted to commercialize the technology – and another mentor, Professor of Chemistry Matthew Becker, stepped in and offered her a postdoctoral opportunity that would allow her to continue developing the technology in her spare time.
To help Ritter along the commercialization route, Becker also introduced her to Duke Capital Partners.
Combining science and business
“Honestly, I just loved it,” Ritter said. “I hit the ground running and never looked back.”
Ritter dove into the DCP Associates Program, synthesizing her corporate law and scientific skills to help the Operations Team find, evaluate, and present investment opportunities to the investor members.
“The whole breadth of venture capital is learned through that program. I was honestly quite shocked when I first joined at how the Associates are involved in almost every single element of what we do,” she said. “I don’t think that there’s any substitute for the hands-on experience that we get.”
Luo joined as an Associate early in the COVID pandemic; he couldn’t go into the lab and was looking for experiences beyond the bench.
“I was the first postdoc they took on and it changed a little bit of how diligence was done for them: they started to focus on more of the scientific side of things,” Luo said. “Overall, I think it made the diligence process better.”
A key learning for Luo was how to balance the facts of the science presented now versus what it could be in the future.
“People who only have a scientific background look at each company like a grant: Oh, this doesn’t work, there are these problems with it. We’re not really putting emphasis on the fact there’s also the team here that is going to solve these problems,” he said. “We have to trust that they will work out these kinks.”
Min had a similar takeaway from his experience with the OTC Fellows Program: “One of the big things I learned was changing that mindset of being focused on just evaluating what’s in front of you and focusing more on the potential – where could this go?”
Assessing real Duke innovations disclosed to the office on a weekly basis also gave Min a fresh set of eyes to look at his own work.
“The program helped me communicate the big picture concepts of my project more effectively,” he said.
Continuing to grow
All three trainees have continued to grow, now as full-time employees of Duke Capital Partners and the Office for Translation & Commercialization.
“As an Associate you’re really focused on one thing, usually diligence,” Luo said. “But that’s one part of being a good investor. There’s a lot more relationship management.”
The increased responsibilities and interaction with investors are exciting challenges for Ritter as well.
“They are so incredibly intelligent and so thoughtful about the investments that they do or don’t do,” Ritter said. “Getting to know more about their preferences is an ongoing process for everybody at DCP.”
Now on the other side, and helping manage the OTC Fellows Program, Min sees the impact Fellows have more clearly.
“I’ve started to see how the technology assessments that the Fellows have done help our office in building that conversation with the inventor,” he said.
Luo had other offers on the table – consulting, industry scientist, other investing firms – but chose DCP for a simple reason: “I love Duke, so I decided to come back.”
“Everybody here cares about translating science,” Min said of the OTC team. “It’s cool to be around people that are motivated by a similar goal.”
A launching pad for Duke students
The trio encourages students and trainees at Duke to consider expanding their skillsets through one of the OTC student programs.
“An internship is not something that’s taking away from your bench science, it can contribute to it, too,” Min said.
“We have a very robust Associates program now,” Luo said. “It’s actually the first year that we had more PhD students than we have MBA students. It was not by design; we just took on people that we thought were a good fit.”
Beyond all the real-life, hands-on expertise gained through the programs, Fellows and Associates have had an impressive track record of placement in top jobs in venture capital, industry research, exciting start-ups, and more – including right back here at the very office where they interned.
“I kept working and working, and they kept giving me more and more work and responsibilities, and here we are,” Ritter said.
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Two of OTC’s student and trainee opportunities are currently recruiting, with application deadlines in early September 2024. Learn more about the OTC Fellows Program, DCP Associates Program, and Duke New Venture Fellows.