Venture Fellows

We hire students to help support the Planetary Solutions Impact Accelerator (PSIA), part of Yale Planetary Solutions (YPS) and powered by Yale Ventures. The goal of PSIA is to provide Yale faculty innovators with the support needed to move their discoveries from the lab into society. Through milestone-based funding of up to $250,000, the accelerator harnesses Yale’s strengths to translate bold ideas into scalable innovations with lasting planetary impacts.

PSIA recruits a select number of students each academic year to provide commercialization support to the faculty PIs who are in the PSIA program. Students will be matched with dedicated faculty PIs with whom they will collaborate throughout the process. This catalyzing support will be wide-ranging and specific to each faculty project, with the goal of refining proposals for PSIA funding and ultimately helping prepare emerging technologies for market.

Commercial support may include:

• Building and refining pre-seed pitch decks
• Leading market sizing and competitive analysis
• Identifying potential go-to-market strategies
• Mapping out key commercial milestones and associated fundraising strategies (i.e., potential non-dilutive and dilutive sources of capital)
• Conducting customer discovery, including participating in the NSF I-Corps program run by Yale Ventures alongside the PI
• Exploring potential external partnerships with industry and other strategic interests
• Researching potential policy, regulatory, and legal hurdles and their implications
• Meeting with climate tech experts in residence (EIRs) to understand landscapes, prioritize workstreams, and shape investable ventures
• Helping PIs prepare proposals and other materials for the PSIA process
• All work will be done in close collaboration with PIs, with oversight from the PSIA team and strategic input from EIRs.

Responsibilities:

• Ramp up quickly on early stage technologies to determine their commercial potential
• Identify, prioritize, and execute independent workstreams, with the end goal of building the commercial case for projects
• Meet regularly with PI to coordinate efforts and collaborate on shared workstreams
• Coordinate with PI to prepare materials for PSIA deadlines
• Check in periodically with the PSIA team to share updates and identify areas of additional support needs

Requirements:

• Current undergraduate, graduate, or professional school student at Yale
  • Note that PhD students must (1) have a relevant focus area and (2) receive advisor approval.
• Interest in lab-to-market entrepreneurship, with a focus on environmental technologies
• Excited by working across many stages of the commercialization process, rather than specifically one dimension or skillset
• Enthusiasm for collaborating closely with faculty on translating their research into commercial potential
• Punctual, responsible, and able to work with faculty in sync with PSIA deadlines

In PSIA's inaugural cycle, we received an application from Benjamin Chan, the Scientific Director of Yale's Center for Phage Biology & Therapy. He was proposing a venture using phage therapy as a service to reduce disease outbreaks in aquaculture — a project he had begun working on with his wife, Joanna Bingham. Their team had cutting edge scientific expertise and strong operational know-how, but were still sorting through critical commercial elements of the project.

We paired Ben's team with one of our PSIA Venture Fellows, Michael Thompson, who goes by MT. A joint MPP/MBA student at Yale, MT had close to a decade of experience deploying capital across energy, food, and agriculture companies in emerging and developed markets. He was excited to get deeply involved with an early stage lab-to-market work, collaborating closely with a PI to build the commercial case for the project.

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Being paired with MT was incredibly beneficial as his experience and education complemented our team's perfectly. I appreciated how quickly he was able to adapt to our style, catch up on the science and social impact possibilities, and produce results that were understandable for the whole team. I came into the PSIA process with zero business experience, yet he somehow made everything both understandable and to the point.

Benjamin Chan, PSIA Awardee and Scientific Director of Yale’s Center for Phage Biology & Therapy

With Ben and Jo's help, MT quickly got up to speed, at which point they were able to identify key outstanding questions around the venture that MT could help address. This included estimating unit economics, calculating breakeven point, and determining the best go-to-market strategy. Along the way, the three iterated on their pitch deck for the final committee presentation.

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The most rewarding part of the PSIA Venture Fellows program was getting to work on a real-world, live venture alongside people who are deeply passionate about the problem they are trying to solve. I genuinely enjoyed working with Ben and Jo, and appreciated the opportunity to contribute to a project with real potential for both commercial and planetary impact in a very practical way. I’m excited to see how the project continues to evolve and the impact it can have on sustainable aquaculture and global food systems.

Michael Thompson (MT), PSIA Venture Fellow and Yale MPP/MBA '28

After several months of work, Ben delivered the final pitch to the judging panel, with Jo and Ben on hand for Q&A. Happily, Ben's project was granted a PSIA award of up to $250K over two years, which was featured in YaleNews. Moving forward, the three plan to continue collaborating as the project moves towards its first demonstrations in the field.