Recursion and Center for Technology & Venture Commercialization to Jointly Launch Incubator
March 1, 2019
Life science and technology startups led by members of
underrepresented communities will be encouraged to apply
SALT LAKE CITY–(BUSINESS WIRE)–lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/Utah?src=hash” target=”_blank”gt;#Utahlt;/agt;–Recursion
and the University of Utah’s Center
for Technology & Venture Commercialization (TVC) have signed a
memorandum of understanding to explore the launch, programming, and
management of an incubator for life science and technology startups. The
incubator will be located in Recursion’s former Research Park offices,
and the company will sponsor the space for an initial period of three
years.
“Recursion’s faster-than-anticipated success and growth meant that we
needed to expand before our lease expired,” said Chris Gibson, Ph.D.,
co-founder and chief executive officer of Recursion. “With the space
sitting dormant, we realized we had the opportunity to repurpose it to
help foster the next generation of biotech and tech companies in Salt
Lake City. Supporting the valley’s innovation ecosystem directly
furthers our goals for recruitment and our thirst for new ideas and
perspectives.”
The 14,500-square-foot facility includes 5,000 square feet of wet
laboratory space, which is in extremely short supply in the Salt Lake
Valley. This will be the first freestanding incubator with wet lab space
in all of Utah. The space also contains offices, co-working space, and
multi-function rooms.
It is anticipated that Recursion and TVC will jointly select an onsite
program manager to operate the space and provide comprehensive support
for the tenant companies—including mentoring, educational opportunities,
exposure to potential investors, and referrals for basic business
services.
“TVC has launched more than 150 companies—including Recursion—in the
past decade,” said Keith Marmer, TVC’s executive director. “We know that
finding affordable lab and office space is one of the biggest obstacles
to building any company. Providing these resources—both the physical
space and the accompanying support network—will greatly accelerate the
companies’ go-to-market timelines.” Companies fostered in an incubator
are twice
as likely to succeed as those that do not receive similar support,
according to research conducted by the National
Business Incubation Association.
The Recursion/TVC incubator will give preference to university startups
and will encourage applications from startups led by historically
underrepresented founders, particularly those who have traditionally
faced additional barriers to growth and funding.
“Innovative companies grow from diverse perspectives,” said Tina Larson,
chief operating officer of Recursion. “We need to do everything we can
to promote opportunities for women and individuals who have been
historically underrepresented in science and technology—paying special
attention to developing the next generation of business and technology
leaders. This incubator will do just that.”
Full financial terms of the MOU were not disclosed.
Expressions of interest for laboratory and office space should be sent
to Paul Corson, deputy director & senior director of entrepreneurship at
TVC: paul.corson@tvc.utah.edu;
801.585.5016.
About Recursion
Recursion is a clinical-stage biotechnology company combining
experimental biology and automation with artificial intelligence in a
massively parallel system to efficiently discover potential drugs for
diverse indications, including genetic disease, inflammation,
immunology, and infectious disease. Recursion applies causative
perturbations to human cells to generate disease models and associated
biological image data. Recursion’s rich, relatable database of more than
a petabyte of biological images generated in-house on the company’s
robotics platform enables advanced machine learning approaches to reveal
drug candidates, mechanisms of action, and potential toxicity, with the
eventual goal of decoding biology and advancing new therapeutics to
radically improve lives. Recursion is headquartered in Salt Lake City.
Learn more at www.recursionpharma.com,
or connect on Twitter,
Facebook,
and LinkedIn.
About the Center for Technology & Venture Commercialization
The Center for Technology & Venture Commercialization is dedicated to
helping the University of Utah’s faculty inventors bring their
innovations to market. TVC is responsible for all aspects of invention
management, patent prosecution, licensing, startup formation and
support, equity management and early-stage funding. The center’s mission
is to generate economic returns for the university and the state of
Utah, expand the university’s reputation for innovation and positively
impact society. The University of Utah was recently ranked
as the 30th-most innovative university in the world by
Reuters: TVC is proud to help foster this spirit of discovery. tvc.utah.edu
Contacts
Jessica Yingling, Ph.D.
President,
Little Dog Communications Inc.
o/ 858.344.8091
jessica@litldog.com
Elizabeth Quinn Fregulia
Director of
Marketing & Communications
Center for Technology & Venture
Commercialization
o/ 801.587.9619
m/ 415.203.5779
elizabeth.fregulia@tvc.utah.edu