Penn builds innovation centre

Pennsylvania University (Penn), one of the Ivy League schools, is set to break ground on its new innovation centre next week, on October 31, 2014. The centre will be built on the site of a former Dupont chemistry lab.

Converting the 23-acre site, which formerly belonged to Dupont, is a big part of the university’s plan to keep its graduates in the area and create an ecosystem favourable to research commercialisation. The Pennovation Centre, at the heart of the South Bank site, will be three-stories high and offer 52,000-square-foot of space to researchers and entrepreneurs.

The university will also make the building the home of the Penn Centre for Innovation, its new technology transfer organisation.

Penn has already completed a nanotechnology centre and will open a new 850-bed graduate housing tower later this autumn. It is also responsible for driving the construction of a tower to house chemical engineering company FMC from autumn 2016 for $50m.

Tony Sorrentino, executive director at Penn’s executive vice-president’s office explained the construction of the new innovation centre and said: “We want to create a little Palo Alto in South Philadelphia. The big goal is to increase our services in technology transfer. The city was always about brawn, and was built on industrial might. Now, it’s being run on brain power.”