With entrepreneurship gaining momentum in St. John’s, Memorial University of Newfoundland has promoted in-house to fill its new position of Director of Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

Paula Mendonça received her PhD in biology from MUN and she has been working in the university’s Technology Transfer and Commercialization Office, or TTCO, for several years.

In her new position, Mendonça aims to develop a greater entrepreneurial mindset throughout the institution, with a special focus on encouraging entrepreneurship among researchers.

“I see myself being this bridge and supporting the different groups that lead entrepreneurship and innovation at Memorial,” said Mendonça in an interview last week. “At the same time, I want to foster new initiatives to complement what we already have in the ecosystem.”

MUN’s entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem has been evolving for years, and the creation of this new position is the latest in a series of changes. MUN was a pioneer more than two decades ago in launching the Genesis Centre to oversee technology transfer at the university and provide a base for young companies. (An early client was Verafin, which last year raised $515 million in capital, a record in the region.)

As it evolved, the tech transfer role was withdrawn so Genesis became the university’s hub for nurturing young companies (a role it fulfills from its new facility on the Battery Campus on the side of Signal Hill). Then two years ago, MUN added the Memorial Centre for Entrepreneurship to the mix, as a place where students can test ideas and learn the basics of establishing companies.

The university has now created the post of Director of Innovation and Entrepreneurship to guide these operations and encourage entrepreneurial thinking throughout the university. Having served as the acting director of the TTCO since late 2018, Mendonça will also continue to be responsible for tech transfer within the university. A native of Lisbon, Portugal, she is also an entrepreneur herself, heading the skincare company SeaBerry Studios.

“My advantage personally is that I’ve been working in the innovation and entrepreneurial community for more than 10 years,” she said. “I’m already involved with all these groups . . . so I feel that they understand how this position can support and strengthen their own position. It really shows the university’s commitment to entrepreneurship and innovation, and a position that reports directly to the Vice-President Research sends a message to everyone.”

Mendonça will be in the thick of one new initiative at MUN in the next two years. The university is one of three Canadian institutions piloting Lab2Market, a new program that aims to develop companies out of university research across Canada. Dalhousie and Ryerson universities will both have generalist pilot projects in 2020 and 2021, while MUN will host specialist cohorts in ocean technology.

The program will work with PhD candidates and post-doctoral researchers to determine whether their scientific discoveries could be developed into startups, and guide them through the early stages of starting a business.

While it’s important to show researchers how their intellectual property could be converted into a growing business, Mendonça believes it’s also important to teach all students how to think like entrepreneurs. This isn’t because everyone will start a business, but because everyone can contribute more to an operation if they can think of innovative ways to solve problems.

“We have a competitive advantage in being a university because we have expertise in growing people’s mindset,” said Mendonça. “When they finish their degree . . . they will have an informed decision on where they want to go next. If they have that mindset, that entrepreneurial mindset, they are going to have an impact no matter where they go.”