About Vice-Principal ResearchQueen’s University QPI team was invited to the Chang Institute at SFU and the Beedie School of Business hosted the annual i2I Venture Pitch Competition. Students completed the entrepreneurial training, pitched their product or emergent venture to a panel of judges which included investors, IP experts and successful entrepreneurs.
The panel of judges included angel investors, IP experts, and successful serial entrepreneurs. Queen’s Partnerships and Innovation’s new Senior Director, Kelly Nolan, was pleased to join the panel for this year’s pitch competition.
“The i2i program helps the 80% of researchers who will not go on to an academic career. Hearing the researchers pitches after the training in product development and commercialization was exciting,” says Nolan. “It was also interesting to note that Queen’s University’s QPI team is highly skilled in both the science and the commercialization and innovation ecosystems. A strategic advantage as many of the judges did not have the deep tech experience that the QPI team brings to the table for Queen’s entrepreneurial researchers.”
The pitch competition gave student-scientists the opportunity to develop more business-savvy scientist-entrepreneur skillset to attract investors, commercialize their inventions, and sell the value of their innovations. Queen’s University’s Dunin-Deshpande Queen’s Innovation Centre also is a partner of the i2i program.
“Any training that helps researchers apply their deep expertise to entrepreneurial pursuits builds our collective capacity to build the product and deep tech solutions needed for things like clean tech innovations and new health treatments that take years to mature and develop into real world products,” adds Nolan.