The Mack Institute is pleased to announce a new course for MBA students, Commercialization of Academic Science, piloting in Fall 2025. This hands-on course pairs student teams with Penn researchers who are developing cutting-edge technologies across healthcare, robotics, artificial intelligence, and more. Students will be tasked with conducting customer discovery, defining market opportunities, analyzing competition, and building go-to-market strategies to bring Penn innovations out of the lab and into the world.
“Over the past decades, Penn’s researchers have consistently delivered major inventions—from the first computer to groundbreaking technologies for COVID vaccines. But turning inventions into innovations requires more than scientific insight,” said Valery Yakubovich, Executive Director of the Mack Institute. “As a hub in Penn’s innovation ecosystem, the Mack Institute meets this challenge by engaging students with Penn’s latest inventions at various stages of development. This course strengthens our toolkit for achieving that mission.”
This semester’s projects range from a soft toy that can help diagnose developmental delays in infants to a line of candy and chewing gum that reduces tooth decay. The scientists involved hail from Penn’s medical and engineering schools, as well as specific research centers such as the Center for Innovation & Precision Dentistry and the Computational Social Science Lab.
The course was inspired by the success of the Y-Prize Competition, a yearly event in which teams of Penn students compete to propose the best application for a technology invented by Penn scientists. Past Y-Prize winners such as Avisi have had success in spinning out into fully-formed startups and Yakubovich hopes that this course can foster the same entrepreneurial energy.
“This new course grew out of the success of the Y-Prize Competition, where we’ve seen firsthand how student teams can move cutting-edge technologies from the lab to the marketplace,” he said. “This course scales the Y-Prize model by engaging more students and showcasing more inventions from a wider range of schools and research centers. Students will gain firsthand experience in bridging the gap between discovery and impact.”