The MIT SUD Ventures Program: Entrepreneurship Training for Researchers in STEM and Beyond

This innovative research paper presents a program that introduces entrepreneurship, innovation, and biomedical product development to engineering, computer science, and other STEM and non-STEM professionals to engage them into startup creation with the goals of preventing, diagnosing or treating substance use disorder (SUD), one of the US most pressing health and social challenges. For more than two decades, SUD has been affecting people from all ages, demographic and socio-economic groups in the US. The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), as the lead federal agency supporting scientific research on drug use, has identified that current SUD research is not properly translating into commercial solutions for SUD. Seeking alternatives, NIDA is fostering the entrepreneurial spirit of SUD researchers, so they are the ones directly offering SUD-focused technologies into the market. This paper presents the MIT SUD Ventures program, a NIDA-funded project focused on training multidisciplinary teams of SUD researchers, engineers, healthcare, and management experts on how to commercialize their discoveries with the support of government funding sources. We introduce the learner profile, the content and skills deemed necessary to support their entrepreneurial efforts, the curriculum implemented and the program structure. We share results related to the learner expectations, experiences, and outcomes of this innovative practice, as well as future steps for the 2024 cohort and impact evaluation. Finally, guided by our results, we discuss the positive value of teaching entrepreneurial skills to academics and researchers to bridge the gaps between basic and translational research. We also make a call for action for all STEM professionals, especially engineers, computer scientists and technologists, to employ their scholarship and research capacity to have a positive impact on solving the SUD epidemic, where they are most needed.