Bench to Shop Students Complete Capstone Project
On May 23, three students — two dual MBA/MD students and one dual MBA/DVM student — presented their capstone project as part of Texas A&M One Health’s Department of Homeland Security program known as Bench to Shop. The project, developed by Drs. Angela Arenas, Tammi “Rosina” Krecek, and Heather Simmons, aims to train next-generation scientists to develop the skills to transition products from research to commercialization.
DVM student Alycia Crandall and MD students Heather Naumann and Lillian Niakan, who began working on the project in January 2016, presented “Closing the Gaps: How a Vaccine, Diagnostic Tool, and Therapeutic Treatment can be Integrated into the Global Campaign against Brucellosis.” At the presentation the students outlined how a Brucella vaccine could be produced and commercialized on a global scale to help the United States and countries abroad.
The capstone project addressed the health of humans, animals, and the environment, while also considering factors such as economic feasibility and cultural barriers to implementing prevention measures.
“This capstone project gave me the chance to combine my experience in veterinary medicine and the business program as a real-world example of how discoveries in the field get to market on a domestic scale,” Crandall said. “I hope to achieve the personal goal of gathering field data and learning how to divide a diverse customer base into specific segments to figure out which stakeholders are the best to target and would be impacted the most or most interested in a potential product.”
The Bench to Shop training program sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate enables next-generation researchers (graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and early career faculty) to gain an understanding of the business regulations, federal and international processes, and research requirements needed to take Transboundary Animal Disease (TAD) research through technology transition to commercialization.
