This is a graduate level course focused on developing entrepreneurial, design thinking skills and its application to graduate research and/or lab productivity, and other scientific, business, education, organizational, communication or start-up pursuits in basic biomedical sciences such as biochemistry or in any discipline the student would like to pursue.

Interactive lectures will include classroom discussions regarding design thinking, team brainstorming and ideation techniques, and methods of idea development. Students will develop entrepreneurial skills by a) Identifying problems as observers in their own research, lab, departmental, career environment or via another person while also considering feasibility and potential impact, b) narrowing the focus to one problem with a clear market analysis, and c) Ideating, prototyping, testing and pitching to facilitators. Some examples which students may choose to ideate for may be annual lab goals, lab meetings for designing experiments, skills development, course or workshop development, student group initiatives. The skills learned in this course will enable the student to lead meaningful engagements throughout graduate school and enhance EQ skills in self-awareness, motivation, and empathy to potentially become Canada’s future scientific thought and entrepreneurial leaders.