Pennsylvania University has opened its new hub that will support scientists and students to develop their research and ideas and collaborate with the private sector.
Pennsylvania University (Penn) on Friday opened the Pennovation Center, a new 58,000 square feet facility that will serve as the institution’s new innovation hub, according to the Philadelphia Tribune.
The centre will house spinouts but also private sector companies, researchers and venture capitalists. The university’s tech transfer office, Penn Center for Innovation, has located its business incubator PCI Ventures inside the new building.
The centre is also home to the Penn Engineering Research and Collaboration Hub (Perch), an accelerator focused on commercialising research conducted at the university into areas including robotics, internet of things, embedded systems and emerging sectors of interdiscinplinary engineering.
Perch particularly focuses on technologies with a social and technical value.
The Pennovation Center has already welcomed 20 businesses and more than 100 individuals that are using laboratories, inventor garages and co-working spaces.
Among these are biotech spinouts Liquid Biotech USA, Blue Pen Biomarkers and CytoVas, as well as robotics business Cosy and candy maker Hershey and semiconductor producer Qualcomm.
The Pennovation Center is part of a $37.5m project undertaken by Penn to better connect its researchers, spinouts and entrepreneurs to the private sector.
Dawn Bonnell, vice-provost for research at Penn, said: “Research and exploration are at the heart of innovation at Penn.
“Anchored by Penn Engineering Research and Collaboration Hub, the Pennovation Center, with both wet and dry labs, shared lab-support equipment, meeting rooms, co-working spaces and startup inventor garages, is creating a new model for advancing knowledge, through research collaboration and entrepreneurialism in areas such as medicine, informatics, robotics, biotechnology, nanotechnology and energy science.”
