Medical Devices Student Spotlight - Alice Lai

Soon to be second year MBS student, Alice Lai sends updates from her summer internship at Replenish, Inc. As a student on the Medical Devices focus track, Alice was able to leverage her interests in health care and engineering to secure a position with Replenish in Pasadena, CA as an intern in Business Development. Through her extensive networking skills, Alice obtained a position where she is able to gain experience in grant application writing, the management and preparation of documents for clinical trials, and even writing business plans for future collaborations.

As a business development intern, Alice has the opportunity to work closely with the CEO of Replenish, Inc. on a daily basis by participating in business meetings and conference calls. In addition, she also attends company meetings and is responsible for completing several long-term projects. In her experiences at Replenish, Inc., Alice has been able to apply concepts and principles from various first-year courses such as Medical Devices, Entrepreneurial Business Law, Marketing, and Bioscience Business Strategy. Alice shares an example of how the first year MBS curriculum has been applicable in an industry setting:

“From entrepreneurial business law class, consultant agreements, types of corporations, contracts, etc. have been very applicable to several assignments I've done on the job.  Knowledge of the content and how to read these official documents have come in handy while reviewing actual documents at work.”

Through this summer experience Alice hopes to gain exposure to the business development side of a medical device company through activities ranging from writing business plans and finding market opportunities for an innovative technology, while learning the ins and outs of the clinical trials process. Alice shares some of the wisdom gained in her first year in her encouraging advice regarding internship searches:

“Besides starting early and networking, don’t ever be discouraged.  Figure out what you want, what you’re good at, and what you want to learn.  Be specific.  This helps when searching because companies want interns that are a good fit for their company.”

By Christina Lai (MBS '11)