Mission
The Kavanaugh Fellowship is the first, and to date the only, competitive fellowship at MIT specifically funding technical scholars to broaden their skills in support of commercial translation and entrepreneurship. Aimed at graduate students and postdocs already expert in technology, the fellowship provides unencumbered time and mentoring at a critical juncture as they prepare to launch new innovations into the marketplace. The program seeks candidates who are both brilliant engineers and ambitious in their desire to see their technology through to impact. The goal is to support passionate technologists as they transition “tough tech” concepts into products that will improve human life, and to encourage a new generation of technical entrepreneurs who will make a career of nurturing their technology to its full commercial potential.
Oversight
Polina Anikeeva
Program Director
Kavanaugh Translational Fellows Program
Polina Anikeeva received her BS in Physics from St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University, and a PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from MIT. She completed her postdoctoral training at Stanford, where she created devices for optical stimulation and recording from brain circuits. She joined MIT faculty in 2011 and is currently Matoula S. Salapatas Professor and the Department Head of Materials Science and Engineering. She is also a Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and serves as the Director of the K. Lisa Yang Brain-Body Center and as an Associate Director of the Research Laboratory of Electronics. She is an associate member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research. Anikeeva’s Bioelectronics group focuses on the development of minimally invasive biologically inspired approaches to record and modulate physiology of the nervous system, and especially in the context of brain-body communication. Anikeeva is a recipient of NSF CAREER Award, DARPA Young Faculty Award, the TR35, Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise, and the NIH Pioneer Award.