Plans for building high-tech laboratories to foster growth of fledgling life-sciences companies won’t be straying far from the Kansas University campus, at least not yet.

Two years after Lawrence and Douglas County commissioners agreed to jointly finance as much as $4 million over the next decade to develop high-tech lab space in town, leaders of the Lawrence-Douglas County Bioscience Authority are gearing up to pump some of its early money into incubator space on campus.

The policy direction, charted in recent months by members of the authority’s seven-member board, is a shift from initial plans to establish a stand-alone incubator somewhere in Lawrence or elsewhere in the county.

The shift toward finding room on campus – likely in one or more buildings on west campus, possibly in a structure yet to be built – emerged as the board got to talking about its goals for:

¢ More research, to produce technologies that can be spun off into commercial operations.

¢ More jobs, to be generated by university research, its direct spin-offs and secondary investments that come with such efforts.

¢ More money, to come through grants to the university, investments from venture capitalists and other commercial endeavors, whether it’s from new businesses coming to town or existing ones tapping into KU research for assistance developing new products.

LaVerne Epp, president of the local bioscience authority, said that commercializing university research offered valuable opportunities for Lawrence, Douglas County and KU – so why not consider allowing the three entities to share resources, wherever they might be?

Nontraditional approach

“We’ve tried to approach this planning without thinking of traditional lines so much,” said Epp, a Lawrence resident and consultant who formerly served as president of Bethel College. “We want to think about what’s best, using the vast resources we have.”

Bob Johnson, vice president of the authority and chairman of the Douglas County Commission, said city and county commissioners clearly had set out two years ago to provide money for establishing lab space in the area. They never even considered locating it on campus.

But now, after hearing from Richard Lariviere, KU’s new provost, it has become clear that opening space on campus for early-stage commercialization efforts could well become a reality.

“We can probably get a lot more effective space for our money than if we had to build a freestanding building,” Johnson said. “And it could be more elastic. Conceptually, it’s very dynamic. It’s a real paradigm shift from where we started.”

Helping establish high-tech lab space as an off-campus commercial incubator likely would come later, he said. That way, concepts tested in university labs and proven in an on-campus commercial incubator might have a place to go to ramp up commercially, at least early on.

“Nothing’s changed with respect to our goals and objectives,” Johnson said, “but the steps to get there may have been reordered.”

The first formal evidence of the paradigm shift will take hold later this year – as an investment in brains, not buildings.

‘Crucial’ position filled

Carey Novak, now program manager for the Technology Commercialization Group at the Institute for Physical Research and Technology at Iowa State University, starts in December as director of business relations and development at the KU Center for Research Inc.

Novak, as a KU employee, will work out of the center’s headquarters in Youngberg Hall on west campus and report directly to Jim Roberts, KU’s vice provost for research.

What’s different is that the bioscience authority will have an investment in Novak’s human capital. The authority will pay 75 percent of his salary and benefits.

Novak’s impending arrival is being looked upon as the first step toward solidifying the team approach that members of the authority see as essential for success.

“It’s important to get this person in place first,” said Boog Highberger, treasurer of the authority and a Lawrence city commissioner. “There will be a need for (lab) space as we move forward, but I think filling this position is crucial to getting us moving forward.”

Novak, for his part, is looking forward to the opportunity. At Iowa State, he’s overseen a three-person staff, two graduate students and a $400,000 budget to coordinate commercialization efforts – taking the university’s science into the market, and helping existing businesses take advantage of university expertise.

He’s worked with more than 20 startups during the past seven years, and most remain in operation – “some with 15 to 20 jobs,” Novak said. “One employs five software engineers, all graduates of Iowa State University. Another has three engineering graduates, and brought in $700,000 in federal research grants.”

Fostering success in Kansas, he said, is “very doable,” considering the wide range of eager resources looking for ways to build a burgeoning bioscience industry. The Kansas Bioscience Authority anticipates having $588 million at its disposal during the next decade or so, just one of the numerous “back end” organizations and investors that are poised to build on “front-end” efforts that often start as research on university campuses.

“If I can come in and plug that middle gap – be a bridge, be that conduit – then I think we can really make a difference,” Novak said.