Units: 2-3

Quarter Offered: Autumn

This course teaches the essentials for a startup to build a valuable patent portfolio and avoid a patent infringement lawsuit. Jeffrey Schox, who is the top recommended patent attorney for Y Combinator, built the patent portfolio for Twilio (IPO), Cruise ($1B acquisition), and 300 startups that have collectively raised over $3B in venture capital. This course is equally applicable to EE, CS, and Bioengineering students. For those students who are interested in a career in Patent Law, please note that this course is a prerequisite for ME238 Patent Prosecution.

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Units: 3

Quarter Offered: Autumn

For graduate students only, with a preference for engineering and science majors. Emphasis on managing high-growth, early-stage enterprises, especially those with innovation-based products and services. Students work in teams to develop skills and approaches necessary to becoming effective entrepreneurial leaders and managers. Topics include assessing risk, understanding business models, analyzing key operational metrics, modeling cash flow and capital requirements, evaluating sources of financing, structuring and negotiating investments, managing organizational culture and incentives, managing the interplay between ownership and growth, and handling adversity and failure. Limited enrollment. Admission by application. Prerequisite: basic accounting.

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Units: 2-3

Quarter Offered: Autumn

This course teaches the essentials for a startup to build a valuable patent portfolio and avoid a patent infringement lawsuit. Jeffrey Schox, who is the top recommended patent attorney for Y Combinator, built the patent portfolio for Twilio (IPO), Cruise ($1B acquisition), and 300 startups that have collectively raised over $3B in venture capital. This course is equally applicable to EE, CS, and Bioengineering students. For those students who are interested in a career in Patent Law, please note that this course is a prerequisite for ME238 Patent Prosecution.

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Units: 3

Quarter Offered: Autumn

This course is designed to enable graduate students and advanced undergraduate students in science and engineering to hone strategies for career success. Drawing strongly on entrepreneurial principles and lessons from industry, the course complements the traditional curriculum by focusing on career-building tools that students need to improve their professional prospects and achieve their goals. Relevant for those who plan to pursue careers in academia and industry alike, a central focus will be on managing one's career as if it were a start-up, emphasizing principles that empower individuals to take more control of their futures: investing in yourself, building professional networks, taking intelligent risks, and making uncertainty and volatility work to one's advantage. Through a series of in-classroom presentations and interviews - with professors, entrepreneurs, executives, athletes, investors, and thought leaders from diverse fields and sectors - students will gain important knowledge and practical strategies, with course modules on topics such as ideation and innovation, the skill of self-advocacy, the fundamentals of negotiation, building and managing teams, and effective communication and storytelling. Additional modules will focus on biotechnology and deep tech start-up companies, as well as strategies for cultivating a successful academic career. The idea for this course emerged from the instructor's reflections on 30 years of research, teaching, mentorship, and deep entrepreneurial experiences spanning the gamut of approaches to translational science - academic discovery, invention, conceiving of and leading multi-institutional research centers, building research and business teams, launching and financing start-ups, building business models to advance real-world applications of cutting-edge science, and seeing through research-based companies to success (including growing an idea into a multi-billion dollar company). For this course, students will be expected to complete relevant reading assignments, participate actively in class dialogue, and complete regular writing assignments focused on course topics as they relate to one's own career-building needs and professional aspirations. Students may also have opportunities to lead class discussions on topics of interest.

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Units: 3-4

Quarter Offered: Autumn

Explores the relation between technology, war, and national security policy from early history to modern day, focusing on current U.S. national security challenges and the role that technology plays in shaping our understanding and response to these challenges. Topics include the interplay between technology and modes of warfare; dominant and emerging technologies such as nuclear weapons, cyber, sensors, stealth, and biological; security challenges to the U.S.; and the U.S. response and adaptation to new technologies of military significance.

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Units: 4

Quarter Offered: Autumn

A hands-on, project-based course, in which teams identify and work with users, domain experts, and industry participants to identify an unmet customer need, design new products or services that meet that need, and develop business models to support the creation and launch of startup products or services. This course integrates methods from human-centered design, lean startup, and business model planning. Each team will conceive, design, build, and field-test critical aspects of both the product or service and the business model.

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