Session K51: Scientist Entrepreneurs: Making a career founding start-up companies

Commercializing Deep-Tech: Case Studies from a Scientific Founder

This talk will explore entrepreneurial endeavors in the deep-tech, hard science environment that is the playground of the American Physical Society. Dr. Coe-Sullivan will share stories and lessons learned from QD Vision, an MIT spin-out of almost two decades ago, through to his current McGill and University of Michigan spin-out NS Nanotech. Fundraising, intellectual property, market-fit, products, and exits will all be explored.   

From BEC to CEO

Can a PhD in Physics prepare you to start a company?  Can a Post-Doc at NIST be the ticket to entrepreneurship? While the subject of research at these institutions may not be directly applicable to industrial problems—in my case, Bose-Einstein Condensation and quantum computing— the skill sets and tools you develop are on the critical path in preparing you to succeed in high-tech industry and even in starting a company. In this presentation, I will take the audience on my personal journey from a University of Colorado/JILA lab to founder and CEO of two companies, and finally to retirement and board service with other emerging companies. My first company manufactures high precision optical devices and systems, and my second is a diagnostics and testing company, making testing equipment for veterinary, water quality, and diagnostics applications. I will share how a physics degree prepared me, the lessons learned, and encouragement of more entrepreneurial activities.

    

Taking Physics from the Laboratory to the Real World

Quantum physics enables the best measurement devices on the planet. Laboratory atomic clocks are accurate to a second in 50 billion years; atomic inertial sensors can measure gravity variations of a part in a billion. However, laboratory devices are large, fragile, and require a small army of grad students and postdocs. Developing quantum technology for the real world goes beyond engineering. Devices must be redesigned from the ground up, requiring the ingenuity and creativity of grad school, but with a narrower focus.

 

I’ll discuss my experience co-founding and running Vector Atomic, a quantum technology start-up. Building a deep tech company is challenging but rewarding. While a physics PhD doesn’t provide the formal business training, many of the skills acquired are translatable: problem solving, commitment, teamwork, and courage – justified or not.

    

From Scientist to Entrepreneur and back again

Most people go into graduate school assuming they'll become professors and rarely look around at other opportunities. In this talk I'll go over my rather meandering career path that at first brought me away from science and eventually brought me back to leading a team of physicists and engineers working on cutting edge science. I'll try to elucidate what tidbits of career advice I have garnered and espouse the hard truth, that no matter what career path you take, you'll still probably end up writing grants and proposals.