From the Lab to the Market: Bridging Technology and Business at Harvard Business School and MIT Sloan

While completing my PhD in Medical Engineering and Medical Physics through the Harvard–MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology, I had the opportunity to cross-register at Harvard Business School and the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Building something new in the lab is only half the work. For research to be impactful, it often needs to become a product, a company, or a platform with real-word reach. But while in the lab, the challenge is to prove that something can work; in the market, it expands — the technology has to solve an urgent problem, attract capital, fit into an operating model, clear regulation, and scale through an organization. Almost none of that is taught in an engineering PhD, so I went looking for it.

Venture Scaling and Value Creation at HBS

The first course was Private Equity Finance, taught by Victoria Ivashina. It works through the full arc of a deal — sourcing and valuation, execution and capital structure, the operational levers that create value after a deal closes, and the mechanics of exit. It is not a venture capital course but a study of buyouts and growth equity, and the discipline it teaches is the investor’s question: not whether a technology is interesting, but where the return comes from and what has to be true for the thesis to hold.

The second course was Scaling Technology Ventures with Jeffrey Rayport, built around the problem a company faces once it has found product–market fit and has to ride its own growth.

Commercializing Deep Tech at MIT Sloan

At MIT Sloan, I pursued the Healthcare Certificate, which focused on healthcare systems, innovation, and commercialization.

One of the most memorable experiences was Innovation Teams (i-Teams), taught by Luis Perez-Breva. The course was built around a practical challenge: taking a real technology from an academic lab and developing a path toward commercialization.

My team worked on a technology based on gold nanoparticles. We assessed potential applications, market needs, stakeholders, competitive dynamics, and commercialization pathways, ultimately developing a plan for how the technology could move beyond the lab.