CENTER FOR MEDICAL INNOVATION
CENTER FOR MEDICAL INNOVATION
Dr. Julie A. Hansen Fellowship Program
The Dr. Julie A. Hansen Fellowship program at the Center for Medical Innovation (CMI) is designed for students at the University of Utah to directly apply their skills to projects under development in CMI’s MedTech Venture Studio and prepare for a career in the medical technologies (MedTech) industry.
Students work in direct collaboration with CMI’s full-time staff to support the ongoing research and development of new medical technologies as they are de-risked and prepared for competitive entry into the healthcare market. Dr. Julie A. Hansen Fellows will be required to work 20 hours per week on-site at the Sorenson Center for Medical Innovation on the University of Utah Health campus.
Over the course of their year-long program, Hansen Fellows will be assigned to a variety of different projects relevant to their skillset and potentially collaborate with other Hansen Fellows on the same project(s). Focus areas include:
- Market Research: In-depth market assessments of potential new technologies and reimbursement strategies
- Engineering: Prototyping & design of new medical devices in the CMI Venture Studio
- Regulatory Affairs: Engaging with industry-educational programming and or relevant governing bodies (e.g. FDA)
The fellowship program will run three consecutive semesters, with students starting the fellowship in Summer 2026. The program will run through the end of the Spring 2027 semester.
Candidate Requirements
Must be an undergraduate or graduate student (Masters or PhD*) with at least one full (12-month) calendar year remaining in their academic programming at the University of Utah. Relevant academic programs may include:
- Masters of Public Health (MPH)
- Masters of Healthcare Administration (MHA)
- Business Administration (Bachelors or Masters)
- Mechanical, Electrical or Biomedical Engineering (Bachelors, Masters, or PhD*)
20 hours per week on-site at the Sorenson Center for Medical Innovation
Familiarity with device development (any industry) or previous experience in healthcare preferred.
Hansen Fellowship Program Benefits
- Gain professional, direct experience in the MedTech development industry
- Ongoing projects incorporate current best-practices and academic trends
- Two semesters (Fall & Spring) of full tuition scholarship for student's academic program, in addition to monthly living stipend
*Note: Some PhD students may be ineligible for tuition or the living stipend due to existing funding structures within their department.
HOW TO APPLY
The application for the 2026-2027 Dr. Julie Hansen Fellowship is now closed. Applications for the 2027-2028 cohort will open in January 2027.
Meet our 2026-2027 Hansen Fellows
Emily Ferguson is pursuing a dual MBA/MHA at the University of Utah, where she is developing the business and strategy acumen to complement nearly five years of hands-on clinical and operational experience. Before joining the CMI, she worked in direct patient care, gaining firsthand insight into what it actually takes for healthcare systems to evaluate, adopt, and integrate new devices and products.
Emily is drawn to medical innovation by a straightforward conviction: well-designed systems and thoughtfully commercialized technologies can improve patient outcomes at a scale that individual clinical care cannot. That same operational instinct is what she brings to early-stage MedTech, with an eye for what works in practice, not just in theory.
She holds a BS in Kinesiology from the University of Utah and is on track to complete her MBA and MHA in May 2027. A Texas native who has called Utah home for eight years, Emily can typically be found skiing or snowboarding when she isn't at CMI or in the classroom.
Alexander Gibson is pursuing an MBA and an MS in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Utah. His work bridges health policy, biomedical research, and entrepreneurship, with a focus on expanding access to high-quality healthcare. He is passionate about developing culturally grounded, AI-powered tools for underserved communities and has co-authored publications at Stanford Medical Center on Medicaid access and trauma care. He earned a BS in Biophysics from Brigham Young University, where he published research on machine learning for cancer detection. He led the development of TriagePoint, a mobile pre-screening system that won the 2025 Best in Medicine Award at Utah’s Bench to Bedside competition. Through his fellowship at the Center for Medical Innovation, Alexander brings technical depth and business strategy to early-stage projects, preparing to lead as a future scientist at the intersection of medicine, invention, and entrepreneurship.
Lincoln began as an engineering fellow at the CMI in the summer of 2023. From then to now, Lincoln has been pursuing an Honors Mechanical Engineering B.S. with an emphasis on biomechanics. He wants to specialize in upper-limb prosthetics and ergonomics and is passionate about wearable technology that mimics and enhances biological evolution. At the CMI he helped create a spinal traction device with 3 motorized degrees of freedom, a pressure chamber used to measure the effectiveness of a novel cataract extraction method, a cheap and transportable carbon monoxide monitor, and more to come.
His design ability stems from a young-age interest in building everything out of things lying around his house, only limited by his curiosity. Aside from developing medical devices, Lincoln enjoys sketching, origami, and cooking.