Training Northwestern Medical Students to Think Like Entrepreneurs | The Querrey InQbation Lab’s Business Research Fellowship
In medical school, students are immersed almost exclusively in clinical training, with little exposure to the forces that ultimately shape whether new technologies reach patients. The Querrey InQbation Lab’s (The Q) partnership with the Feinberg School of Medicine (FSM) is helping break that mold with the Business Research Fellowship. Now in its second year, it is a differentiator for Northwestern, offering medical students the opportunity to step outside the walls of the hospital and classroom, introducing them to the business, regulatory, and translational dimensions of healthcare innovation.
The 2025-2026 Fellowship launched with a dinner that brought this year’s fifteen Fellows, all M3/M4 students, together with the faculty innovators, industry mentors, and panel of residents and medical fellows who will be advising, teaching, and participating in the initiative. After the success of last year’s pilot and the growing inbound interest, the program has been expanded on all fronts thanks to the generous support of alum and serial entrepreneur Steven Deitcher (FSM ’88, Honors Program). As Sonia Kim, Executive Director, Querrey InQbation Lab, and Marianne Green, Vice Dean, Education, FSM, noted in their welcomes, the program thrives on the collective energy of students, clinicians, and entrepreneurs.
The Fellowship is a part of The Q’s Medical Device Studio, a launchpad for health technologies that supports clinician innovators to advance from “napkin drawings” to prototypes, and ultimately, to patient impact. Over the next 10 weeks, the Fellows will be trained to conduct due diligence on projects under consideration for the Studio, asking not just whether a technology works, but whether it can reach patients and make an impact. This year’s projects span fields such as 4D manometry, neuroangiography, neurorehabilitation, urology, and next-generation balloon catheters. Each student team is paired with the Northwestern faculty innovator and guided by mentors and consultants, enabling authentic cross-disciplinary collaboration. This structure places students squarely in roles they would never experience through traditional training alone—working shoulder-to-shoulder with inventors, business strategists, and physician-scientists.
The weekly sessions, led by industry experts, cover the critical aspects of commercialization, including unmet needs, medical device development, solution approaches, competitive analysis, regulatory strategy, market opportunity, go-to-market strategy, reimbursement, and investment thesis. With a 6–8 hour weekly commitment, the program is designed to integrate seamlessly into students’ demanding schedules while still offering meaningful immersion. Importantly, the Fellows’ analyses and final presentations will guide which technologies move forward into the Studio, where projects receive up to $50K in funding and advance toward licensing, fundraising, or company formation.
For Northwestern medical students, the Business Research Fellowship is more than an extracurricular—it introduces them to how their clinical training can help define the tools and technologies that will shape the future of medicine and serves as a steppingstone. Students can further develop their innovation and commercialization skills through Northwestern’s curricular offerings such as NUvention Medical offered by the Farley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation or Medical Product and Financing and Commercialization or Entrepreneurship in Healthcare both offered at the Kellogg School of Management. These pathways allow students to build on their Fellowship foundation and gain even deeper expertise in entrepreneurship, business strategy, and venture development. Business Research Fellows demonstrate what is possible when innovation is cultivated with intention. Together with the Medical Device Studio’s ecosystem, they are helping build a pipeline where bold medical ideas are not only imagined but transformed into real-world solutions that can improve patient lives.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
2025-2026 Business Research Fellows: Jason Zhang, Sydney Fleishman, Niket Gupta, Harris Avgousti, Sahil Doshi, Devin Srivastava, Connor Workman, Elena Lopez, Divy Kumar, Ariz Keshwani, Daniel Selgrade, Namrata Chintalapati, Abhinav Balu, Caroline Gonzalez, and Shiv Patel
2025-2026 Mentors: Carson Thomas (PhD, McC ’93 ’99), Jim Jang (MD, WCAS ’91, FSM ’94), Israel Raz (MBA, KSM ’98), Evan Norton (MBA, KSM ’02), Eric Heinz (MBA, KSM ’22, and Kevin Mehta
2025-2026 Residents and Fellows Consultants: Zain Khawaja, MD- Emergency Medicine (PGY1), Aditya Belamkar, MD-Internal Medicine (PGY1), Chris Wei, MD-Neurosurgery (PGY1), Narain Reddy, MD-Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery (PGY1), Reena Sulkar, MD-Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery (PGY1), Sean Halloran, MD, MBA-Internal Medicine (PGY2), Ahad Azimuddin, MD, MBA-Surgery (PGY2), Heba Osman, MD- Cardiology (PGY3), Breanna Polascik, MD- Orthopedic Surgery (PGY3), John Dickens, MD, MBA-Emergency Medicine (PGY4), Nick Volpe, MD, MBA-Pediatric Anesthesiology (PGY5), Sandeep Bharadwaj, MD- Cardiothoracic Surgery (PGY6), Brian Vadasz, MD- Pathology/Clinical Informatics (PGY6)
2025-2026 Session Instructors: Eric Heinz, Founder and Managing Partner, Heinz Ventures; Michael Garrett, CEO of Garrett Technologies; Jay Miller; Badri Amurthur, SVP, CTO, LivaNova; Tyler Wanke, CEO, Founder Madison Scientific; Katie Arnold, CEO, Founder, SPRIG Consulting; Keith Chadwick, Gemini Law; Jerzy Wojcik, VP Regulatory and Quality Services, EdgeOne Medical; Prashanth Somu, Global Product Manager, Boston Scientific; Micah Litow, SVP, AI and Strategic Initiatives, Alamar Biosciences; Deborah Avalos, Director Procurement Services, Northwestern Medicine; Evan Norton, Founder, Managing Partner, SPRIG Equity; Kevin Mehta, Partner, 3Pillars Solutions; Laura Beken, Executive Director, TCA Venture Group; Rekha Ranganathan, SVP and GM, GE Healthcare; Alexei Mlodinow, co-founder, CEO, Board Director SIA Health, Venture Partner, SPRIG Equity