After studying biology as an undergraduate at San Diego State University and working as a research assistant for a biotechnology startup company, Matthew Giacalone decided he wanted a career in biotech.

A Ph.D. in cellular biology would give him the science background he needed. But 28-year-old Giacalone, working on the advanced degree, knew he needed more. At the biotech startup he listened to managers talk about funding, budgets, investor relations and business plans.

It was a foreign language to the young scientist.

SDSU offered Giacalone that extra something he thought he needed to bridge both worlds – a new program that would meld a Ph.D. with a masters of business administration specifically geared toward life sciences.

Local biotechnology companies Invitrogen and CardioDynamics, as well as the drug company Pfizer, are helping fund the new program and write its curriculum.

"One of the biggest challenges in our industry is attracting candidates who have the skill to envision functional applications for cutting-edge research," Invitrogen chief executive Gregory Lucier said. "This new program is a positive step in training skilled scientists to become business leaders of tomorrow."

Although only two students are participating in a pilot study of the joint degree program, SDSU hopes to drum up support from more companies and enroll more postgraduate candidates by the fall semester.

Meanwhile, the school is also designing a stand-alone MBA program geared specifically for a scientist or businessperson already working in biotechnology who wants to further his or her education in the aspects of the industry.

It makes sense to start such a program in San Diego, home to the third-largest cluster of biotechnology companies in the country, said Gail Naughton, dean of the university's College of Business Administration.

More than 95 percent of SDSU's Ph.D. graduates in cell biology join biotech or life science companies, Naughton said.

In another effort to address this need, the University of California San Diego is building a new business school that will focus on training managers for San Diego's technology industries. The school aims to enroll its first full-time MBA students in fall 2005.

As a founder and corporate executive of now-defunct local biotech Advanced Tissue Sciences, Naughton saw firsthand that there were plenty of issues scientists could benefit from learning about if they chose to go into business rather than stay in academics.

When pursuing her own MBA, Naughton said, she learned a lot about high-tech and running telecommunications companies. But there was little taught about the special aspects of biotech: How to do long-term strategic planning and competitive analysis if a biotechnology company takes more than 10 years to get a product to market. How to deal with regulatory agencies.

Local business leaders confirmed that there is a need to teach the unique business aspects to these scientists, Naughton said. So she began pitching her idea for the combined degree to area companies and asking for their financial support.

She also said she wanted company executives to help create a curriculum that would be ideally suited for their needs.

Invitrogen and Pfizer invested $10,000 each. CardioDynamics contributed $5,000. And Naughton is lobbying more firms to contribute.

Carlsbad-based Invitrogen's involvement is much more than a check, Naughton said.

"The company's executives are giving a tremendous amount of their time to lecture in class and work closely with the faculty in taking the current curriculum and modifying it with biotech case studies and actual life experiences," she said.

Next month, the company's chief executive will make presentations on campus. And the company, which makes gene testing kits and other tools used by drug discovery companies, is offering the Ph.D.-MBA candidates internships in their facility.

Giacalone was about a year into his Ph.D. program for cellular biology when he was approached by SDSU staff members about becoming part of the pilot program for the joint graduate degree.

"They knew I was working for a startup here on campus and was planning to keep on that route with my Ph.D.," Giacalone said. The company, MPEX, is investigating antimicrobials and why infectious agents become immune to the compounds that are designed to kill them.

"I've gone to more and more meetings to present data and I would hear management talk to scientists and there was really no communication going on," he said. "The science people didn't know the business world, and the business people didn't know the science world.

"I thought, wow, what a great degree that would be. It would help more of the discoveries made in academia be brought to the public with more fluidity. I wanted to be part of that."

Fully aware the curriculum was fluid and still evolving, Giacalone became one of the two students to begin pursuing the joint degree.

All Ph.D. candidates at SDSU must do some of their research at UCSD. San Diego State cannot grant Ph.D. degrees without working in conjunction with the other school.

Giacalone embraces the idea of the business community helping write his curriculum.

Some courses, such as economics and statistics, make sense to learn from academics. But when it comes to marketing and other aspects of business, Giacalone wants a real-world perspective.

"I personally want to learn from people with real-life experience and contacts," Giacalone said. "These people are willing to come back to academia and tell us how what we are learning in the classroom really works."

"It provides industry-level knowledge, and that is really a cut above in my eyes."

Instead of teaching as graduate students, people in the new program will be paid interns at local biotechs. Their Ph.D. thesis will be application-based, focusing in part on their research and turning it into a product.

Instead of writing a master's thesis, they will be required to write a business plan based on their discovery in the scientific lab.

They should earn the degree in five to six years, at least a year, possibly two, sooner than they would had they sought their Ph.D. and MBA separately.

"I'm a really lucky boy," Giacalone said.