Just before Christmas this past year, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology had a recommendation for Natalya Brikner, one of its aerospace engineers and doctoral students: If she wanted to get her ambitious start-up company off the ground, using the university's own patents, it was time to drop out.
Image: M. Scott Brauer for The Chronicle - Louis Perna and Natalya Brikner are Ph.D. candidates at MIT working on a propulsion system to maneuver very small satellites in space. They formed a company to commercialize their project, but the work has robbed time from their graduate studies.
