Entrepreneurship
The faculty and students in the Department of Medical Physics have a rich history of inventing technologies and spinning off those inventions into start-up ventures outside of the University of Wisconsin. To date, more than 25 companies have been launched by the Department of Medical Physics faculty and students. Currently, nearly 1/3 of the faculty are actively engaged in start-ups, with about 20 invention disclosures filed per year and about 10 patents awarded annually. As such, the Department of Medical Physics has the highest per faculty entrepreneurial record of any part of the University of Wisconsin.
Building on this phenomenal track-record, the Entrepreneurial Fellowship program is designed to be the premier entrepreneurial experience in medical physics, ensuring that inventions and discoveries developed in our burgeoning research programs become tools that help improve healthcare and fundamentally transform what is possible today.
Industry and Internships
Many medical physics graduates continue their career in industry, often without knowing what their industry career options might be, what their careers might look like, often without knowing whether that was the right decision, and often uncertain about undertaking such a big life decision. All graduate students have a range of opportunities for work with, or inside of, industry that can occur during their PhD studies or immediately following. However, engaging into these opportunities is typically not structured and few guidelines are offered.
Most internships are done informally as a leave of absence from their graduate program, and are designed through negotiation. While internships can be a formative educational experience for some, they might also not be effective, as the options might not be thoroughly discussed with the research advisor, and the implications of doing it might not be well thought out.