Houston—With one year of medical school down, Erik Halvorsen was well on his way to becoming a doctor when a realization struck him: He didn’t actually want to treat patients.

“I was much more interested in asking questions and I wanted to find answers to things that people never did before,” he says.

So, instead of getting his medical degree, Halvorsen ended up earning a doctorate from the University of Virginia—he studied neural pathways in Parkinson’s disease. But, still, he says the PhD career trajectory of doing research in a lab didn’t quite fit. “Being in the lab, it just didn’t move fast enough for me,” he says.

Three years ago, the 21 hospitals that make up the Texas Medical Center launched the TMC Innovation Institute to facilitate collaboration among the amazing innovation, research and medical progress occurring daily in the Medical Center. The program has been incredibly successful supporting and investing in these new discoveries. Dr. Erik Halvorsen offers a fascinating “state of the innovators” report.

In his role as Director of the TMC Innovation Institute, Erik keeps visionary new ideas moving through the TMCx accelerator, TMCx+ incubator and TMC Biodesign Fellowship Program, while playing an instrumental role in JLABS @TMC, the AT&T Foundry for Connected Health@TMC, the TMC advisor/mentor network and the emerging innovation funding infrastructure.

Laptops out and coffee cups full, the young entrepreneurs busily took notes about medical device procurement, one of the topics in the newest accelerator program at the Texas Medical Center.

Tuesday’s class opened the fourth group in the program, called TMCx.

The stage is set and the fancy chairs set out to welcome about 300 people to the TMC Innovation Institute on Thursday, to watch the inaugural TMCx accelerator medical device class give their last pitch at Demo Day.

Since forming their companies, the nine startups have gone on to raise a combined $9 million in funding, built 28 prototypes, had 65 engagements with advisors and clinicians and 30 engagements with customers.

The Texas Medical Center has named Erik Halvorsen director of its Innovation Institute.

The role is a part of the TMC’s goal to make the organization more of a hub for commercialization and innovation. Halvorsen will oversee the day-to-day operations of the Innovation Institute, which includes the TMCx, life-science accelerator, and TMCx+, the adjoining co-working space.

Erik Halvorsen started in his new role as senior director of technology transfer and industry collaboration in the Office of the Vice Provost for Research on Aug. 4. Halvorsen comes to Tufts after serving as the executive director of the Boston Children’s Hospital Technology and Innovation Development Office.

Halvorsen said that he will oversee the translation of innovation and research into technology, with the goal of increasing the potential of the Office of Technology Licensing and Industry Collaboration, also known as Tufts Tech Transfer, to develop products with an impact.

Drug companies inherently absorb significant risk when developing compounds and biologics for clinical use. A recent article suggests that only one out of every 12 drugs that enters clinical trials succeeds and the cost of a drug successfully reaching the market now exceeds an average of $5 billion when you add up the cost of all those that failed along the way.

I have a difficult time explaining what I do for a living as Director of Technology and Business Development for Children’s Hospital Boston’s Technology and Innovation Development Office.

Friends and family know I have a PhD in neuropharmacology, but I don’t do research. They know I work at Children’s, but I don’t see patients. They hear I work with patents, but are confused because I never went to law school.