AMN8: From science to spinoff companies

22 March, 2017

Associate Professor Justin Hodgkiss shares his experiences in founding a company based on research that was conducted in his group.

As the government doubles down on trying to get good science into the marketplace, how are scientists preparing for the commercial world? 

Do scientists make good businesspeople? Are they able, after a lifetime of studying in institutions to learn how to become a researcher, then turn their attention to putting that research into application? Can they become less Walter White (sans the Breaking Bad character’s methamphetamine empire) and more Elliott Schwartz, his old lab partner who went on to form a successful pharmaceutical company?

It’s a question, in general rather than Breaking Bad terms, that Justin Hodgkiss has thought a lot about. The deputy director of the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology has spent his whole life in a system that geared him to one goal – to create interesting science.

But then last year a system based on some of his (and others’) research was turned into a spinout company from Victoria University of Wellington...

Read the full article at The Spinoff