IU Starts $10M Incubator, Signs on Pervasive

The building is going up on university-owned property at 10th Street and the State Road 45-46 bypass. According to a university statement, Pervasive Technology Labs has already signed on to lease in the building. The firm was created in 1999 with a $30-million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc., which also announced today that it will provide the university with a five-year, $15 million endowment to establish the Pervasive Technology Institute in the building. It's not clear how much space Pervasive will take in the building. University officials did not return calls for comment.

The Institute will be made up of three divisions. The Digital Science Center will focus on creating an intuitively usable cyber-infrastructure with tremendous capabilities for supporting collaboration and computation. The Data to Insight Center will create new tools to understand and gain insight from the vast quantities of data now produced in digital form. The Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research will lead the creation of IT security policy, security monitoring tools and secure applications in critical areas of cyber-infrastructure, including personalized health.

University president Michael McRobbie said in a statement that the new building is part of Innovate Indiana, a project to expand economic development across the state behind the central office of the IU Research and Technology Corp. "This undertaking represents a long-term commitment by Indiana University to provide our research scientists with all the support and assistance they will need to transform the discoveries and great ideas generated in their laboratories into marketable products and services," McRobbie said in the statement. "Ultimately, all of Indiana will benefit from the jobs and economic vitality generated by this collaboration between public research and private entrepreneurship."

The university already has another incubator, a 98%-leased, 67,500-square-foot building on the Central Canal in Downtown Indianapolis. That building has 23 tenants.

Bill Stephan, IU VP for engagement, said in the statement that the incubators will attract other nearby development. "The area around the (Bloomington) incubator is fast becoming the focus for a wide range of life science and tech-based enterprises and will serve as the anchor for the university's technology corridor, which will extend north along the bypass to the IU Cyclotron facility," he said.