Team Master's Project Program

Discover Emerging Bioscience Leaders Today

When your organization needs extra bandwidth or a fresh perspective, Keck Graduate Institute (KGI) can help. As a corporate sponsor, you can delegate a project to a skilled team of graduate students who bring both scientific and business expertise to your challenge.

Since 2002, our Team Master’s Project (TMP) program has supported leading biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and medical device companies. These collaborations empower industry partners to focus on high-priority work, expand their capacity, and build a reliable pipeline of future talent—while providing graduate students with hands-on experience and training.

What Our Corporate Sponsors Have to Say

From Pfizer to Repligen, prominent pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies partner with us. Learn more about their experience as corporate sponsors for our Team Master’s Projects by watching our video.

Partner with KGI

Provide your contact information and a member of our Corporate Partnerships team will connect with you to discuss how a TMP could fit your company's project needs.

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BY THE NUMBER

400+

Completed Team Master's Projects

140

Industry Partners

1,500+

Students

How the TMP Program Works

Our Team Master’s Projects are built on collaboration, exploration, and meaningful problem solving. To help your organization tackle a real-world challenge, we assemble a team of passionate graduate and undergraduate students and an expert faculty advisor who work together to deliver actionable solutions and cutting-edge ideas.

KGI students bring expertise across the biotechnology and healthcare landscape, including:

Infrastructure and operations
Technology landscaping
Regulatory affairs
Business development and strategy

Market research
Competitive intelligence
Bioprocessing
Device engineering

Review our deliverable timeline to learn more about a project’s general cadence

Our Team Master’s Project program helps you connect with tomorrow's bioscience leaders today!

When you become a corporate sponsor, you’ll be assigned a team of three to six graduate students with backgrounds in biology, bioengineering, chemistry, physics, medicine, and related fields.

Your KGI student team will contribute approximately 2,000 hours to your project over the course of one academic year. Additionally, sponsors can get a head start by employing KGI students as summer interns to accelerate progress before the fall kickoff or extend the project through summer internships the following summer.

In collaboration with a KGI faculty advisor and a corporate liaison from your organization, the student team creates a detailed project plan that outlines milestones, deliverables, timelines, and accountabilities to guide their progress throughout the year. As the project evolves and new ideas surface, the student team will update the plan regularly to ensure they stay on track and keep your company well-informed.

Each sponsoring organization designates at least one internal point of contact to work closely with the student team throughout the project. The liaison monitors progress, provides guidance, and connects the team with subject-matter experts and resources across the organization.

Together, the liaison and the KGI student team establish a regular communication schedule, including weekly check-ins, along with clear milestones and deliverables.

Effective liaisons have strong communication skills, topic expertise, candor, and a genuine interest in collaborating with passionate, motivated students. Liaisons can be anyone, from junior employees seeking to gain experience in managing teams to seasoned executives looking to vet future talent.

Types of Projects

Whatever problem you need to solve, KGI will work with you to customize the support you receive and maximize outcomes. Past projects vary greatly from science-oriented to business-oriented and have included the following:

Medical Technology Design and Engineering

Designing and prototyping medical devices or subsystems, including needs assessment, requirements definition, CAD development, material selection, iterative prototyping, and bench or ex vivo performance testing.
Supporting applied medical device development through systems integration, engineering analysis, testing infrastructure, and documentation, including simulation, instrumentation, verification planning, and manufacturability assessment.

Operations and Process Optimization

Creating an optimization strategy to relieve a manufacturing bottleneck by balancing internal vs. external sourcing—evaluating factors such as time, cost, resources, complexity, regulatory risk, and quality
Designing early-warning systems for emerging diagnostic technologies and forecasting their potential impact on future pharmaceutical markets

Business, Strategy, and Commercial Analysis

Conducting valuation and strategic assessment of non-core pharmaceutical assets, including competitive analysis, development-stage review, revenue modeling, and identification of potential partners for licensing, asset sales, or acquisition
Assessing and improving commercial, supply chain, or quality and compliance operations through benchmarking, process analysis, performance measurement, gap diagnosis, and definition of prioritized improvement initiatives.
Formulating regulatory pathway strategies for life science products, including product classification, reference product analysis, global sequencing considerations, and evaluation of approval risks affecting development and launch readiness.
Defining AI- and automation-enabled business initiatives, including use-case prioritization, data capability assessment, success metric design, and development of execution roadmaps to enhance insight generation and operational effectiveness.

Scientific and Technical Projects

Developing a quantitative decision framework for integrating whole genome sequencing into a service portfolio
Assessing computational methods for generating 3D structures of small molecules and validating them against experimental data
Building software and hardware tools for image acquisition and analysis of sensitive protein and peptide separations
Developing and validating new methods for peptide and protein separation using proprietary systems

Search Past TMPs

Explore Current TMPs

KGI Student Testimonials

Our Team Master’s Project program connects students with industry partners to solve real business challenges. Students gain executive-level experience while companies receive implementable solutions. As a sponsor, you invest in the future of KGI students and help them make an impact in their field. Discover what our students have to say.

Learning how to give people feedback and address conflicts when they happen has been great because when you have a job, you don't work by yourself.

Moraes de Souza

MEng '21

We used simulation techniques and software to characterize parameters for a bioreactor, which is something I hadn't done before. One thing that I have enjoyed is learning new techniques and tools to perform calculations more efficiently. All of these online tools have opened my horizons.

Aishani Yadav

MEng '22

We had a lot of group projects. When going into the workforce, everything is about collaboration. So KGI prepared me well for that.

Stephanie Lee

MBS '21

The opportunity to connect with industry leaders is incredible. I was able to interact with experts in the field while developing the ability to not only promote the presentation but also promote myself.

Jason Wang

MBS '16

I couldn’t believe how much exposure to industry KGI students had or how much they were able to do. KGI got me interested in the biopharmaceutical industry.

Yazmin Estrada

MEng '20

TMP provides a tremendous level of opportunity to help go deeper in certain areas where we didn't have the bandwidth as we were building our teams.

Ben Cadieux

Former Head of Medical Affairs at Rigel

Why Become a Corporate Sponsor?

At the Keck Graduate Institute, working on a Team Master’s Project is more than an assignment; it's a pivotal learning experience that empowers our students to grow as aspiring leaders in the med tech, health care, and biotech industries.

Along with contributing to student success, sponsoring a TMP helps your organization gain:

Increased workload capacity without adding permanent staff
Progress on high-priority initiatives that might’ve remained on the back burner
An interdisciplinary approach that blends scientific and business perspectives to provide deeper analysis and actionable recommendations
Leadership development opportunities for rising managers who supervise the project and guide student teams
Fresh insight and innovative thinking from some of the brightest graduate students in the bioscience industry
A direct pipeline to exceptional talent for internships and full-time roles

Become a KGI Corporate Sponsor

Tap into high-impact collaboration and fresh talent by joining Keck Graduate Institute as a corporate sponsor. From expanding your team’s capacity to making strides in advancing key initiatives, you’ll gain a trusted partner committed to delivering real-world results.

Want to learn more? Review our Team Master's Project FAQs. Or, take the next step to get started today!