About AIMS

Welcome

The mission of AIMS - the Association of Industry-Minded Stanford Professionals - is to provide guidance and support for postdoctoral scholars who are interested in pursuing a career path in industry. Our main goal is to create a fertile networking environment for entrepreneurially minded postdocs and ease the transition between postdoc and industry.

Activities organized by our group feature mixers, seminars and talks by industry representatives. Please check our calendar for the next upcoming event. We also have sister sites on LinkedInFacebook and YouTube.

History

AIMS (originally e/ims -- entrepreneur/industry mentorship series) was founded by three Stanford postdocs in July 2010 to address the growing needs of postdoctoral fellows (2000+ postdocs at Stanford in 2012) for alternative careers outside of academia. Inspired by Stanford's trademark entrepreneurial mindset, Irfan Ali-Khan, Navaline Quach and Stephane Boutet teamed up to launch AIMS (Association of Industry-Minded Stanford professionals), the first postdoc-entrepreneur assosciation at Stanford. AIMS mission is to encourage talented postdocs to seek leadership positions in alternative careers through entrepreneurial thinking.

Irfan, a former SUPD co-chair working towards a Bio-X spinoff and an active attendee at the d.School and GSB, approached Navaline and Stephane with the idea. Navaline was involved in leadership initiatives with the SUPD and later participated in Stanford Ignite at the GSB. Stephane was founding a crowdfunding social enterprise dedicated to funding projects in the education, cleantech and healthcare industries. Focusing on the mantra to "be the solution", the lean team immediately organized highly successful monthly seminars. Later, joined by additional members, they created the AIMS Executive Leadership Team that organizes seminars, BBLs, and E-Challenges, providing educational and networking opportunities. AIMS was soon growing rapidly into the vibrant membership and strong leadership that exists today.

AIMS is a postdoc community of future industry leaders, social innovators, and passionate science entrepreneurs.

Contact

For questions or feedback, please direct all emails to Marta Vilalta Colomer at [email protected].

 

Front page banner image:

© Peter Thoeny, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0