Vanessa Chan bridges the gap between innovation and the market
The Jonathan and Linda Brassington Practice Professor in Materials Science and Engineering is the inaugural vice dean of innovation and entrepreneurship at Penn Engineering.
Vanessa Chan, Jonathan and Linda Brassington Practice Professor in Materials Science and Engineering, brings a wealth of experience and a passion for innovation to her new role as the inaugural vice dean of innovation and entrepreneurship at Penn’s School of Engineering and Applied Science.
Vanessa Chan has been appointed the inaugural vice dean of innovation and entrepreneurship at Penn Engineering.
(Image: Penn Engineering Today)
With a career that spans co-leading McKinsey’s innovation practice, founding her own company, re.design, and serving as the U.S. Department of Energy’s Chief Commercialization Officer, Chan has a unique perspective on bridging the gap between groundbreaking ideas and real-world impact.“Across all the organizations I’ve worked with—whether it’s a large company, a startup, an academic research lab, or the federal government—I’ve realized that we don’t do enough to teach people how to bring technologies to market. We focus heavily on the hard science and the technology itself, but we don’t always address the equally critical skills needed to commercialize those innovations.”
Chan highlights the importance of teaching engineers these skills. “Engineering education focuses heavily on understanding the fundamental science—math, physics and the laws of nature. That’s crucial because science is at the core of all technology, and a deep understanding of these fundamentals is essential.”
“However,” she adds, “what we’re not doing enough of is teaching engineers about the real-world problems they need to solve. Inventing something is hard, but it is equally as hard to bring a technology that fundamentally works to market: You have to understand if you can scale it economically, there are often regulatory hurdles to overcome and you need to understand the value chain decision-makers that you need to navigate to bring the technology to market.”
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