Invent, valorise, market
One of Brightlands’ goals is to ensure that developed concepts and products make their way to users, usually through the market. Vanessa LaPointe, assistant professor at MERLN at Brightlands Maastricht Health Campus is a good example of this concept in action.
If you had asked Vanessa LaPointe years ago if she would ever work in an academic research setting, her answer would have been “never, a thousand times never!” In the end, an academic career ultimately proved to have more appeal than a commercial one. In 2014, Clemens van Blitterswijk offered her a job as an assistant professor at the regenerative medicine research institute MERLN. Her own research team works at the interface between biology, medicine and engineering on manipulating stem and other cells. Her latest challenge? Starting her own company!
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Gera Nagelhout is, in many respects, not a typical professor. She was the first in her family to attend university, and at the age of 34 was appointed endowed professor of Health and Wellbeing of People with a Lower Socioeconomic Position.