Devorah Fischler
In 1999, Tom Cassel (ME’68, GME’73, GR’79) was a Penn Engineering doctoral alumnus with decades of entrepreneurial success in the energy sector. With a career bookended by a Peace Corps stint building water systems in the ‘70s and the sale of his company’s advanced power plants to multinationals in the ‘90s, he’d accomplished nearly everything an ambitious engineer would want.
But he was restless. Retirement didn’t suit his searching, thoughtful character.
That year, a chance meeting with Eduardo Glandt, the then-Dean of Penn Engineering, occasioned an unexpected job offer: to create and teach an entrepreneurship program tailored for engineers. He accepted.
“Dean Glandt’s vision for creating an entrepreneurship program within Penn Engineering was right on point,” says Cassel, now a Practice Professor in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics (MEAM) and the Director of Penn Engineering Entrepreneurship. “Business schools had been the domain of entrepreneurial studies, but in reality, technology innovators and entrepreneurs are much more likely to be hanging around engineering schools.”
It was half a century after Nobel Prize-winner Robert Solow proved that economic growth hinges on the ability to invent and implement new technology, and the commercial value of technical intelligence had become impossible to ignore: Entrepreneurship had broken out of business school.
The Innovation Economy
Jennifer Friel Goldstein (BE’01, MBA’06, BIOT’06) came of age as the economy shuddered and danced. In 2000, the dot-com boom met its bust: Stocks crashed, companies dissolved and job prospects thinned. During her senior year at Penn, momentum seemed to stall.
Someone’s version of the internet era was over, but a different one was taking form. Technology’s place in the world was volatile, but Friel, a Bioengineering major, embraced it. In the wake of the bubble, a steadier accumulation of energy at the intersection of science and markets began to glow with potential.
“It was a glorious time to be starting a career at the intersection of biology, medicine and engineering,” she recalls. “It felt like science fiction was coming to life.”
With novel advances like robotic surgery tools, monoclonal antibodies and the Human Genome Project, the fundamentals of how we understand and treat disease were transforming.
“It was impossible not to feel that something was missing in the academic curriculum,” continues Friel Goldstein. “It wasn’t clear to me how science traveled out of the lab and into people’s lives, so when I heard about the class Dr. Cassel was starting, I signed up right away.”
In 2000, Friel Goldstein joined the early days of an academic program that set her — and thousands of other students to date — on a life-changing path bridging science and business for a world hungry for marketable innovation.
Today, Friel Goldstein is Head of Relationship Management for Silicon Valley Bank, the storied financial institution that — with her help — created the lending and banking practices that fuel the startup economy.
“Everything I learned in those two courses is still relevant and useful to me today,” she states.
An Entrepreneurial Mindset
Twenty-five years later, Penn Engineering Entrepreneurship (EENT) still maintains a clear objective: to provide the knowledge and skills for engineers to create and lead tech startups. But its larger purpose is to instill the mindset of an entrepreneur in anyone who wants to learn.
“Cultivating a culture of entrepreneurship is critical in any top-tier engineering school,” says Vijay Kumar, Nemirovsky Family Dean of Penn Engineering. “Penn is fortunate to have Penn Engineering Entrepreneurship’s decades of expertise and community of highly engaged alumni to draw from in bringing this culture to the forefront of our educational programs.”
Jeffrey Babin (C’85, MBA’91), Practice Professor in MEAM and the Associate Director of Engineering Entrepreneurship, first joined the program back in 2003. A founder, consultant and angel investor who also serves as the Penn Engineering Faculty Director for Venture Lab, Babin emphasizes the importance of the program’s universal relevance.
“We teach you what it takes to create a successful startup and to understand what worked and what didn’t in other people’s companies,” he says. “But we’re not looking for everyone to launch a venture. Everything we teach is applicable, no matter what your career path might be.
“We teach the importance of team and people,” Babin continues. “The importance of building trusted relationships. The importance of strong intellectual property. The importance of being a missionary and not a mercenary. The importance of adaptation and creativity.”
Negotiation, strategy, finance and leadership. Product-market fit. Some details have been updated as time has gone on, but after 25 years, the core principles of the program have remained the same.
“From day one, we emphasize the critical importance for entrepreneurs to relentlessly pursue uncommon knowledge,” says Cassel. “It’s about disciplined, unbiased, first-hand observation. Seeing what others don’t see, seeing how little we saw at first. Complaints not spoken, pains unexpressed. Perseverance to uncover people’s true problems, feelings and desires is what leads to innovative, differentiated products and is at the core of entrepreneurial success.”
Brian Halak (BE’93), Practice Professor in Bioengineering and a venture capitalist who joined the program in 2021, agrees.
“If you take one thing away from this class, it should be this: It’s all about asking questions,” says Halak. “It’s about not accepting facts as they are. And it’s about talking to people with different perspectives and really listening. This is something all successful entrepreneurs have in common. They ask, ‘Why does it have to be this way?’ and ‘Can it be different?’”
Engineering Entrepreneurship at 25
Alex Cogdill (BIOT’16) talks about science with the warmth and precision of a cancer researcher who cares as much about people as pathology. She punctuates each enthusiastic thought with upshots and outcomes, hints of the strategic muscle of her business mind.
Cogdill found EENT at a crucial moment in her career. A member of the lab of Carl June, the Richard W. Vague Professor in Immunotherapy in Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine, she was part of a team in the early stages of commercializing CAR T-cell therapy, but she was baffled by decisions on the business side.
“We would bring investors and business strategists this incredible science. And they would be completely disinterested.”
Working toward a Penn Engineering master’s in Biotechnology, Cogdill joined Cassel’s class in 2013. “It changed my life,” she states. “I was able to see that these weren’t stupid business decisions at all. They were great business decisions.”
Armed with the insight that scientists must robustly communicate how great technology offers value, she forged an entrepreneurial career in research and industry. Today, as Head of Strategic Initiatives at Daiichi Sankyo, Cogdill finds Cassel’s class as helpful as ever.
“I still have all my binders from that class,” says Cogdill. “And I still pull them out. I’ll look at my notes on how competitive forces shape strategy or I’ll review the Palm Pilot case study on IP. It’s all so helpful to think through.”
Now in its 25th year, Penn Engineering Entrepreneurship is more popular than ever. There is an undergraduate minor, a graduate certificate, and doctoral/faculty workshop series. In 2024, the program debuted the Entrepreneurship Fellows Program, which selectively chooses small cohorts of students for an intensive, year-long community experience, including a summer startup internship.
Looking ahead, Penn’s Engineering Entrepreneurship Program seeks to build on its 25-year legacy of success.
“Our aspirational goal for the program is to widen its reach so that every Penn Engineering student graduates with the mindset of an entrepreneurial engineer,” says Jonathan A. Brassington (GEng’97), Partner at NewSpring Capital and Chair of Penn Engineering’s Technological Innovation and Entrepreneurship Board. “The ability to ‘think entrepreneurially’ prepares engineers for success, wherever their career paths may lead.”
Importantly, future participants in the program will continue to form lasting connections that continue after graduation.
“As in life, entrepreneurship is about relationships,” says Cassel. “Students come to realize this from classroom case studies, guest speakers, alumni mentors and summer internships. Money is important, but is simply a tool. What really matters are the entrepreneurs’ relationships with the customers we sell to, the suppliers we buy from and the people we work with. This is the over-arching takeaway from our entrepreneurship program at Penn Engineering.”
Learn more about Penn Engineering Entrepreneurship by visiting the program’s website.