By MARTY LEVINE
Pitt has created a new way to encourage serial entrepreneurship — a focus on repeated invention, including applications to people’s lives — among women and under-represented minority faculty.
“We’re trying to close the equity gap in academic innovation, and we want to do it strategically,” said Cecelia Yates, School of Nursing faculty member and herself a serial entrepreneur, having founded three companies already. “We would like continuous innovation to be threaded through the institution.”
Yates is directing the new program for PittEI3 Fellows, 10 of whom started on Feb. 1. PittEI3 (Equitable, Inclusive, Innovation and Incubation) fellowships were awarded to faculty in a large variety of schools, including medicine and bioengineering as well as social work and law. The awardees are early- to mid-career Pitt faculty already doing research, with the aim of connecting these researchers to coaches, mentors and sponsors as well as networking opportunities. They will also receive academic innovation and entrepreneurial skills training, help with developing an individual academic innovation plan and partial salary reimbursement for related professional development.
The fellowships are aimed at creating personal connections for early-stage innovators and building new entrepreneurial pathways for them to move their ideas forward to have maximum impact, Yates said.
She pointed to statistics that show women and minorities are vastly underrepresented as inventors, patent grantees, those who commercialize patents and those funded by venture capital.
“The impact of inequality … can be measured in the trillions of dollars annually,” she said.
“Typically, women are over-mentored and under-sponsored,” she added. While mentors may advise on what steps to take, sponsors are advocates for individuals when they are not even in the room, she pointed out. And fellows’ coaches will come from industry, especially Pitt alumni, where “many, many have stepped up to help,” Yates said.
Over the past two decades, Pitt has made an institutional investment in women and under-represented people in research but that has not translated to big enough numbers participating in the University’s innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem, she said.
“We’ve designed an overall program, and the fellowship is just one arm of that program,” Yates emphasized.
PittEI3 also is intended to help Pitt leadership think about how University policies and procedures might assist with the stated goals. It will form new networks and partnerships with historically Black colleges and universities as well as higher-education institutions with enrollments exclusive to woman. PittEI3 is also in process of establishing an internal advisory board to assist with these aims.
Trainings will be offered through Pitt’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute, Office of Research and Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. They will focus on human-centered design, Yates said, moving research to the implementation level: “When researchers are designing their project, we hope that they are engaging their stakeholders, they are engaging their community.”
The first group of fellows, with their affiliations and current research, are:
Jill Demirci, Department of Health Promotion & Development, School of Nursing, researching the development, testing and dissemination of innovative interventions and programs to support human lactation/breastfeeding, including the creation of a nationally disseminated equity-based lactation education program for undergraduate nursing students.
James Huguley, School of Social Work, researching school and family-based interventions that promote positive developmental outcomes for Black youth in adverse and oppressive contexts.
Charles Jonassaint, School of Medicine, researching novel technologies to expand the reach and impact of healthcare.
Katrina Knight, Department of Bioengineering, Swanson School of Engineering, researching ways to improve the lives of women with pelvic floor disorders through the development of novel and innovative treatments while also increasing the number of minorities pursuing an education and career in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).
Lauren Kokai, Department of Plastic Surgery, School of Medicine, researching methods to enable the surgical repair of challenging ischemic wounds by treating hostile wound beds with simple, affordable and effective therapeutic solutions that restore tissue health and function.
Christi Kolarcik, Department of Pathology, School of Medicine, researching the development and testing of novel therapeutic approaches for the treatment of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and related neurodegenerative conditions.
Mangesh Kulkarni, Department of Bioengineering, Swanson School, researching tissue-engineered approaches to diabetic wound healing, Type 1 diabetes, corneal regeneration, abdominal wall repair and inflammatory bowel disease.
Rebecca Price, Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, researching the role of neurocognitive factors and neuroplasticity in the etiology, course and treatment of depression, anxiety, compulsive behaviors and suicidality.
Andrele Brutus St. Val, School of Law, researching labor and employment law, law student resiliency, legal education pedagogy and leveraging technology to provide effective online legal education.
Juan Taboas, Department of Oral and Craniofacial Sciences, School of Dental Medicine, researching ways to commercialize a regenerative endodontic therapy for children.
Marty Levine is a staff writer for the University Times. Reach him at martyl@pitt.edu or 412-758-4859.
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