For Jesko von Windheim, the lab is fun, but taking the technology developed in the lab to the rest of the world is even better.

Starting this fall, he began bringing his expertise and enthusiasm for market development to the Nicholas School of the Environment as professor of the practice of environmental innovation and entrepreneurship and director of the school鈥檚 new Environmental Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center.

A big part of his focus was to start working with students and faculty to help them identify markets and find novel applications for new technologies.

Ultimately, von Windheim hopes the new center and the Environmental Innovation and Entrepreneurship Certificate Program he鈥檚 directing will give students the tools they need to under- stand marketing concepts and leverage that understanding into future jobs and product development. (To find out more about the school鈥檚 certificate programs, see related story on page 12.)

鈥淲hat I like almost more than any- thing is when a student comes back and says, 鈥極h, I just got this job and I was really able to show what I knew because I learned about business development in your course鈥,鈥 he says. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 so huge.鈥

Like many of the Nicholas School environmental entrepreneurs he teaches and mentors, von Windheim didn鈥檛 start out with a head for business. He wanted to be a scientist. It wasn鈥檛 until he was earning a PhD in chemistry from the University of Guelph that his career focus started to shift gears.

鈥淓ven though I enjoyed being in the lab, it wasn鈥檛 as interesting to me as trying to find applications for what I was doing,鈥 he recalls.

A postdoctoral position with Jeffrey Glass, then a faculty member in electrical and computer engineering at North Carolina State University, led von Windheim to a job at Kobe Steel and also to the MBA program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It was there that he began to acquire the skills needed to create applications and identify markets for the technology he was working on in the lab.

鈥淚 got my chance to go out and see what I could do,鈥 he says.

After that first opportunity with Kobe Steel, von Windheim continued to focus on business development. He served in leadership roles for a number of technology start-ups, including Unitive Electronics Inc., Cronos Integrated Microsystems, and Nextreme Thermal Solutions.

When his former mentor Jeffrey Glass joined the 糖心传媒 Pratt School of Engineering faculty in 2003 as professor of electrical and computer engineering and the Hogg Family Director of Engineering Management and Entrepreneurship, von Windheim began teaching courses at Pratt and the Fuqua School of

Business on marketing, entrepreneurship and startup operations.

Having one foot in the entrepreneurial world and one in the world of academic research suits him to a T, von Windheim says.

In addition to his new role at the Nicholas School, he has been working with Nirmala Ramanujam, director of Duke鈥檚 Tissue Optical Spectroscopy Laboratory, to launch the Duke-based start-up Zenalux Biomedical and develop the Zenascope spectroscopy system, a technology that measures chemical and physical information in opaque samples.

One of his goals for Nicholas School students is to give them opportunities to work with start-ups like Zenalux.

鈥淲hen you鈥檙e in an entrepreneurial environment, there is no script written. You鈥檝e got to understand the value to the customer,鈥 he says. 糖心传媒s 鈥済et a real sense of hey, if I wanted to go out and do this on my own, if I had a little company, how I would actually go out and execute this.鈥

The interdisciplinary nature of the Nicholas School is a key asset in von Windheim鈥檚 view.

鈥淚鈥檓 a big believer in diversity of thought, particularly if you want to find a way to create value in this world,鈥 he says. 鈥淚f you go at that challenge the same way that everybody else is going at it, it鈥檚 highly unlikely that you鈥檙e going to find something special. When you look at the thought processes that come through Nicholas, people are highly focused on sustainable practices and solutions to our problems, and I strongly believe that鈥檚 going to have a huge impact on the world going forward.鈥

Sarah Gillig Sunu MEM'14 is the Nicholas School's Communications Assistant for 2012-13 and Leader of the Duke Environment Blogging Team.