On Monday, the Illinois Fermentation and Agriculture Biomanufacturing Hub (iFAB) was named by the U.S. Economic Development Administration as one of 31 Regional Innovation and Technology Hubs. The creation of the iFAB hub was a joint effort between the Integrated Bioprocessing Research Laboratory, Champaign County Economic Development Corporation, and Economic Development Corporation of Decatur & Macon County. From the press release:
Led by the Integrated Bioprocessing Research Laboratory (IBRL) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the iFAB consortium includes 30 partner organizations representing academic, industry, government, and nonprofit partners committed to catalyzing industry growth in Champaign, Piatt, and Macon counties.
“The iFAB designation leverages IBRL’s five years of operational success. Companies come here to prove their technologies, and our aim is for them to remain in the region and establish early manufacturing facilities to progress from ideation to commercialization,” said iFAB principal investigator Beth Conerty, the associate director of business development at IBRL, part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences and The Grainger College of Engineering.
This Tech Hub program is part of the CHIPS and Science Act, passed last year. The next step is for iFAB to apply for $40 to $70 million dollars of funding that will be made available to a handful of the the 31 designated hubs.
Read more about this development here.