Innovation Internship charts market course for alum’s Step Walker
At East Carolina University, student success and regional transformation are strategic priorities. Now, a first-of-its-kind internship intends to enlist students to succeed at transformational ideas.
Sanford Bailey, Rena Pappas, Whanyi Frank-Ito, Jahaviyouna Cruz, Emily Yeager, Erin Elsberry and Phillip Burton participated in the first ever Innovation Internship through the Crisp Small Business Resource Center. (Photos by Bobby Ampezzan)
The university’s Crisp Small Business Resource Center, working with the ECU Office of Commercialization & Licensing, launched a pilot internship that pairs students with inventors who need a plan to carry a product through manufacturing scale-up, regulatory clearance and commercial launch.
In this first internship semester, the inventor is none other than Dr. Phillip Burton ’81, a graduate of the first four-year class at the Brody School of Medicine. He invented the Step Walker, a mobility device that does not just help people walk but has an integrated fall-recovery platform that helps users rise independently if they fall.
Inaugural innovation interns Jahaviyouna Cruz (biology), Erin Elsberry (engineering, biomedical and biochemical), and Whanyi Frank-Ito (public health) took Burton’s Step Walker and over several weeks built a commercialization strategy from the ground up.
They analyzed the competitive landscape, defined market segments, estimated pricing and outlined regulatory pathways. They also evaluated two primary routes: launching a startup or licensing the technology to an established manufacturer.
“Bringing ideas is a lot harder to do than it seems,” Cruz said. “People make it seem that you have an idea, you go make the idea and then you turn it into a really successful business. But no, you have to do so much research behind the scenes.”
Their research and data pointed to a sizable opening in the U.S. mobility aid market that has millions of potential users and the potential for steady growth driven by an aging population.
Inventor and physician Dr. Phillip Burton presents his Step Walker along with three students as part of the final presentation of the Innovation Internship that took place inside of the Isley Innovation Hub on campus last month.
At a final presentation at the Isley Innovation Hub last month, supporters Sanford Bailey and Rena Pappas, who funded the internship, watched the strategy come to life.
“For the student interns, this exercise provided a hands-on expansion of specific knowledge about the subject patent and all attendant issues,” said Bailey. “The student experience vastly increases their hands-on knowledge base and brings to reality what is provided in textbooks and in classes, which is vital to the student experience.”
“The business side of medical devices is just as complex as the technology itself,” Elsberry said. “There are so many steps and processes and legal counsel, and there’s so many different steps of everything you have to work through.”
Burton said, “These students were very, very, very impressive. If I had my own business, I would hire any one of them in a heartbeat.”
The goal of the program is to expand the role of ECU in advancing regional economic development and promoting long-term growth across the region.
According to Emily Yeager, director of the Crisp Small Business Resource Center, this model opens the door to external innovators across eastern North Carolina.
“Traditional university commercialization efforts often focus on faculty inventions,” she said. “Our mission is to serve the region. Innovators are part of that ecosystem. This is how we meet them where they are.”