Ribbon-cutting, open house for FSU research facilities

Florida State University President Eric Barron led a ribbon-cutting ceremony to mark the opening of two buildings designed to provide new opportunities for university researchers as well as university-related start-up companies. The ceremony, which was followed by an open house, took place Wednesday, June 9.

The two properties — the FSU Research Foundation Entrepreneurial Building and the neighboring FSU Research Complex — were purchased by the Florida State University Research Foundation in 2008. (No state or university funds were used in the purchases.) Located in the Commonwealth Center commercial district in northwest Tallahassee, the facilities have related but distinct purposes.

The Research Foundation Entrepreneurial Building has been modified to address the needs of FSU researchers who have launched start-up companies based on their work in the laboratory. Much of the building’s equipment and fixtures, such as fume hoods used in chemical experiments, cabinetry and countertops, were taken from the Conradi Building on campus, which is itself being repurposed. Thus far, the Research Foundation Entrepreneurial Building has three confirmed tenants, with a fourth expected in August. The confirmed tenants are:

• Florida Custom Synthesis, a company created using research conducted by Professor Gregory Dudley of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Led by company president Douglas Engel, Florida Custom Synthesis will work on drug-compound development and research.
• Cable-in-Conduit, Engineering, Fabrication, and Test Inc. (CICEFT), a company started by Tom Painter, a research associate at the National High Magnetic

Field Laboratory at Florida State. CICEFT will encase superconducting wire in stainless tubes for use in nuclear facilities.

• BioFront LLC, a company operated by Jason Robotham, a postdoctoral associate who recently earned his Ph.D. while working in the laboratory of Assistant Professor Hengli Tang in the Department of Biological Science. BioFront will develop hepatitis C testing kits.

“Space is extremely limited on campus, and there wasn’t another location in Tallahassee that has laboratories that are feasible for these types of start-up companies — so we built our own,” said Kirby Kemper, vice president for Research at Florida State. “By purchasing existing buildings and retrofitting them with recycled materials wherever possible, we have come up with an inexpensive way of establishing a small-business incubator for local companies working with university-generated research."

Next door, at 3200 Commonwealth Blvd., sits a former office building that now bears the name of the FSU Research Complex. While it’s not yet a complex in and of itself, the facility does sit on property that has room for another 15,000-square-foot building that may be built by the Research Foundation at a later date if the need arises.

“The Research Complex building was purchased with the idea that we should provide space for FSU tenants who were already renting space in non-FSU buildings,” Kemper said. “If you’re already paying rent, why not pay it back to the university and continue to fund research?”

The Research Complex building currently has two tenants who recently relocated from rented spaces in Innovation Park. They are:

• The FSU Center for Economic Forecasting and Analysis. Led by director Julie Harrington, CEFA specializes in conducting economic research and performing economic analyses to examine public policy issues across a spectrum of research areas.
• The Florida Center for Prevention Research. FCPR, led by executive director Steven G. Brooks, provides research, education, training and technological solutions to address the challenges of substance abuse prevention and other social issues among Florida’s population.

Additional tenants are expected at the FSU Research Complex in the near future.