This category has interviews with research mentors.
Here at Project Lever, we do our absolute best to connect you to an academic advisor for your research project. Unfortunately, through our match algorithm, we can’t necessarily give you the information about an individual professor’s tendencies (at least not yet!). Knowing a professor’s name, e-mail address, and office is only half of the battle. […]
Prof. Zack Cooper is an Assistant Professor of Health Policy and of Economics at Yale University . Prof. Cooper is a health economist and an expert in health care policy. He received his PhD from London School of Economics in 2011.
In his speech at the Healthbox accelerator kick-off in Boston on Thursday, August 16th, Prof. Cooper spoke of the need to shift from selling individual health care products towards selling health outcomes (a service). An example of such approach would be switching from selling a drug to selling a package to treat cancer patients. In the future, companies would be delivering the result, rather than selling a particular product.
Richard Dale (@rdale) is in the process of launching Big Data Boston Ventures, a new micro-VC fund focused on seed-stage big data companies. He was until recently a principal at Sigma Partners, and before that was a co-founder of Phase Forward. Richard is mentor at Techstars, a tech-oriented business accelerator program, MassChallenge, a large startup accelerator program in Boston, as well as Healthbox, a health and technology oriented business accelerator program.
Mr. Dale has emphasized the importance of taking ownership over the business project, as opposed to excessive reliance on mentors’ advice:
“My motto is, if you’re not the smartest person in the room about your company, you’re in trouble. Your mentors have different background and expertise, but how many hours a week does an entrepreneur spend thinking about his or her business? Forty? Eighty? More like a hundred? And how many hours does the mentor spend..? Running your own business is part of the fun.”
Margaret Chan is the Director-General of the World Health Organization. Chan has previously served as Director of Health of Hong Kong Government (1994-2003), representative of the WHO Director-General for Pandemic Influenza and WHO Assistant Director-General for Communicable Diseases (2003-2006).
What determines success at the organization such as the WHO?
Have a thick skin. You must to stay true to your goals and not get pulled into many different directions by different interest groups.
Of course as a professional, you must have technical competence and have to know what you’re doing. You have to adhere to the highest standards of medical science, medical evidence, to make the best decisions. You have to stay neutral and true to science and your professional training.
Harvard Professor Nicholas A. Christakis, MD, MPH, PhD, is an internist and social scientist who conducts research on social factors that affect health, health care, and longevity. He is a Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences; Professor of Medical Sociology in the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School; and Professor of Medicine in the Department of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
How does academic mentorship work?
Essentially, academic mentorship works a lot like marriage insofar as it’s a two-person “market.” A student cannot just decide to be a mentee, just like I could not simply decide to marry my wife without asking her first. Plus, it takes time and commitment to build a relationship.
