The College of Engineering and the College of Management at Georgia Tech combine their experience and expertise to provide a Program for Engineering Entrepreneurship. The program provides Georgia Tech students, faculty and the Atlanta community with educational opportunities in the area of high tech engineering entrepreneurship.

This program is funded by a special opportunity award from the Whitaker Foundation and by the Lawrence P. Huang Chair in Engineering Entrepreneurship. Further project funding has come from the NCIIA for Medical Device ventures and the Technopole, Metz.

Whitaker Foundation Grant
Terry Blum, former dean of the College of Management, and David Ku, professor in Mechanical Engineering, a surgeon, and a founder of SaluMedica and Medizeus, received a $1 million grant from the Whitaker Foundation to develop a new curriculum that allows biomedical engineering students to minor in entrepreneurial management. It also provides for a series of executive courses for biomedical engineers and for conferences to shape and organize the intellectual space surrounding the multidisciplinary field.

The first series was a modularized introduction to business, with a commercialization of biomedical technology course along with two other newly designed classes and a choice of electives already offered by the College. To institutionalize the program and to facilitate commercialization of biomedical technology, two new faculty positions, one in management and one in biomedical engineering, were recruited.

Lawrence P. Huang Chair Professor of Engineering Entrepreneurship
The appointment of David N. Ku, PhD, MD to the Lawrence P. Huang Chair Professor of Engineering Entrepreneurship brings into focus an innovative collaboration between the College of Management and the School of Mechanical Engineering. With this joint appointment, Ku, a Regents' Professor, will direct and teach in the Program for Engineering Entrepreneurship.

The multidisciplinary chair was recently established with a gift from Lawrence P. Huang, formerly Senior Vice President of the Ciena Corporation, to develop and teach technology management and entrepreneurship to engineering and management graduate students. The professorship is housed within the College of Management.

Ku is a teacher, engineer, scientist, surgeon, and entrepreneur and has founded two biomedical commercialization ventures. Ku has been at Georgia Tech since 1986. He received a BA from Harvard in 1978, an MS and a PhD from Georgia Tech in 1982 and 1983, respectively, and an MD from Emory University School of Medicine in 1984.