Entrepreneurship and MIT are often portrayed as a perfect match: a researcher creates a breakthrough in the lab, spins out a company, and brings a product to market that saves lives or improves society. Long‑term success, however, is far from guaranteed, which is why MIT launched the Kavanaugh Translational Fellows Program a decade ago. The program gives scholars who want to turn academic research into real‑world solutions time, tools, and business training to improve their odds of success.
“MIT has world‑class research facilities and faculty, but it also has world‑class entrepreneurial programs,” MIT postdoc Nick Diaco says in a new video. To move an idea from the lab into situations that actually affect people’s lives, both are needed.
For academic innovators, developing a promising technology is only the beginning. Turning it into a viable business requires tough decisions about customers, markets, financing and other factors that lie outside a typical researcher’s expertise. Philanthropist Bart Kavanaugh noted at the 2026 fellows announcement that even at MIT, the majority of those who start businesses will fail.
Kavanaugh and his wife Betty Saks run the Saks‑Kavanaugh Foundation, which funds the fellowship and studies what distinguishes successful startups. The three new fellows—John Zhang, Maximiliano Jara Fornerod and Xinyuan Zhang—are working on faster custom optical lens manufacturing, at‑home strep throat tests, and infrared detectors that operate without energy‑intensive cryogenic cooling.
The year‑long program, managed by MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering, gives scholars time to focus on the business side of their ideas and develop the planning and decision‑making skills needed to move promising research beyond the lab. Former fellow and now Lightfinder CEO Diana Mojahed says in the video, “If while you’re doing your research you can set aside some time to investigate the commercial potential, you get a really good picture of whether it’s a good idea for commercialization.”
Lightfinder builds handheld spectrometers for health care, manufacturing and telecommunications, illustrating the full path from technical specifications to market demand and unit economics.
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