Pennovation Center Opens Additional Space for Innovator Community
Media Contact: Jennifer Rizzi, Director, Communications, Facilities & Real Estate Services, 215.573.6107, rizzi@upenn.edu
April 18, 2018
The University of Pennsylvania’s Division of Facilities and Real Estate Services has opened an additional 4,840 sq. ft. in the Pennovation Center, the University’s business, technology and laboratory incubator. Exciting innovative biotech companies CytoVas, Allevi, and Limelight Bio, and drone mapping software company Aerial Applications have quickly set up shop in this series of flexible inventor offices that can be licensed by entrepreneurs for use as research and development space or dry labs.
Given the success of the initial occupancy of Pennovation Center since its opening in late 2016 — especially the labs and Inventor Garages — Penn decided to take the remaining open and vacant "shell" space and make that available for start-up companies. This Phase 2 area is comprised of two additional 6 person labs with a cell tissue culture bay and a series of flexible inventor offices. The new spaces mimic the popular first-floor Inventor Garages — essentially large rooms with movable furniture for companies entering or expanding in the Pennovation ecosystem.
The Innovators that have licensed this new space are moving up or adding to smaller space they have already occupied in the Pennovation Center. “Continuing to find a home at Pennovation while your business develops and grows has been our intention in creating the ecosystem here,” says Anne Papageorge, Vice President, Facilities & Real Estate Services at Penn. “Whether a company takes additional space in the Pennovation Center, or moves into our office or dry lab space open in other buildings on the 23-acre Pennovation Works campus, Penn is committed with providing for start-ups customizable, affordable locations to build their businesses.”
CytoVas, LLC, is a diagnostic company focused on discovering novel markers for vascular disease. Allevi, Inc., believes that 3D tissues will have a huge impact on both pharmaceutical and clinical development worlds. Limelight Bio, Inc. is an emerging biotech company developing novel gene therapies that greatly expand the utility of clinically-validated adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors to enable the treatment of debilitating inherited diseases that cannot be addressed by current technologies. Aerial Applications is a software company that takes images from drones and turns them into maps and 3D models to make them more useful. In addition, several of the new shared lab benches have already been leased to local start-ups, including ZSX Medical, PolyAurum, and Tandem Repeat Technologies, who now join the Pennovation Center community as new members.
About The Pennovation Center
The Pennovation Center is a 58,000 square-foot three-story facility designed for start-up companies, entrepreneurs, and inventors looking to be part of a unique community of innovators, and includes a full service technology incubator; basic wet and dry laboratories; private offices, Inventor Garages, as well as a coworking space for up to 200 members, operated by 1776. It opened in October 2016 as the centerpiece of the University of Pennsylvania’s Pennovation Works, a 23-acre development adjacent to the University campus on the southern bank of the Schuylkill River providing facilities and amenities to bridge intellectual and entrepreneurial initiatives among University researchers, private sector innovators, and start-ups. Owned by the University, and operated by its Division of Facilities and Real Estate Services, Pennovation Works houses research labs from Penn’s schools of Arts & Sciences, Dental Medicine, Design, Engineering & Applied Sciences, and Veterinary Medicine, and companies such as Qualcomm Philadelphia Research Lab, Netronix, and Novapeutics.
Visit pennovation.upenn.edu and follow Pennovation Works on Facebook, @Pennovation on Twitter, and @pennovationworks on Instagram.
Follow these companies on social media @CytoVas, @Allevi3D, limelightbio.com, and aerialapplications.com.
