Situated an hour from Boston, Nucleate Rhode Island combines world-renowned biotech expertise with small-town, personalized educational support.
Nucleate Rhode Island is an Associate Chapter of Nucleate. The goals of Nucleate Rhode Island’s chapter operations are the following: 1. Empower Rhode Island students to translate and commercialize their research. 2. Connect Rhode Island students to industry mentors to facilitate successful company formation. 3. Act as a cornerstone of communication and collaboration between universities, investors, non-profits, agencies, consultants, venture capitalists and startup founders within Rhode Island. Empower: Over half of all FDA-approved drugs come from university-backed patents, stressing the importance of university involvement in a successful biotech ecosystem. While academic inventions remain a crucial need in a growing biotech space, the doctoral students engaging in this research rarely have formal training in relation to business, company development, regulatory strategy, and all the other niche skills required to incorporate. Nucleate Rhode Island has designed our programming to address this specific need. Through lectures, firesides, panels, and immersive workshop series, we work to empower university students engaging in translational research to not only consider commercialization as an option for their research, but to gain the connections and skills necessary to take the next step towards incorporation. By growing Rhode Island’s pool of inventors, we actively strengthen the ecosystem, providing clients for law firms, consultants, accelerator programs, banks, and incubator spaces. Mentor: One of Nucleate’s greatest strengths is an extensive global network of volunteer mentors with expertise spanning consulting, communications, regulatory strategy, venture capital, law, finance, business, and biotech startups. Many experts suggest that the greatest asset to an inventor is an versatile and diverse team. Through expert recruitment to workshops both inside and outside the flagship Activator program in Boston, we work to connect Rhode Island-based inventors to industry mentors that can guide students through the decisions and strategy necessary to reach incorporation. By maintaining meaningful connections with local universities spanning the Rhode Island area, we also facilitate the introductions necessary for inventors to build their team of expertise, connecting them to MBA students, clinical students, scientific contributors, and potential co-founders. Connect: Nucleate Rhode Island aims to be a cornerstone of communication and collaboration between university spaces and industry resources, as well as between student inventors and the greater biotech community. Rhode Island is an intimate ecosystem, with interpersonal connections remaining a critical aspect of strengthening mentorship and inventor opportunity in our community. Traditionally, the research universities of Rhode Island have existed as isolated, self sufficient entities. As students ourselves, we work to encourage university students to seek collaboration and opportunity within programs and grants from the local biotech community. We also work to facilitate collaboration between any and all established entities that share our goal in encouraging inventor growth and achievement, in order to maximize the opportunities given to students to succeed. This may even include businesses outside of the Rhode Island area, who are always encouraged to be a part of, and contribute to, our ecosystem.
