The University of Chicago's Polsky Center is opening a new science incubator near campus in partnership with Portal Innovations, a local venture capital firm that works to translate life-sciences innovation coming out of universities and get them on the road to commercialization.
The university's tech, entrepreneurship and innovation-focused center will design and manage a science startup incubator at Hyde Park Labs that will be steps away from the Chicago Quantum Exchange, Polsky Exchange, Duality, and other nearby research and entrepreneurship-focused facilities.
Hyde Park Labs is a biotech and life-sciences development that expects to open later this year, joining Fulton Labs and Evanston Labs among additions to the Chicagoland tech ecosystem from Trammell Crow Co. Portal Innovations' flagship location is in the Fulton Labs campus.
The new science incubator — dubbed UChicago Science Incubator — will encompass 22,000 square feet on the fifth floor at Hyde Park Labs and expects to open in the second quarter of 2025.
While Fulton Labs — which first opened in 2020 — has chemistry, biology and artificial intelligence labs to support companies working on therapeutics and med-tech products, the UChicago Science Incubator will cater to earlier-stage companies that go beyond just life sciences, with infrastructure to support quantum, climate-tech and battery companies.
Portal Innovations will oversee day-to-day lab operations and manage the design and buildout in collaboration with the Polsky Center.
"We're in a very exciting time for science, and our thesis at Portal is that the innovation talent pool is distributing beyond Boston and the Bay Area," John Flavin, founder and CEO of Portal Innovations, told Chicago Inno. "Recently because of investments made by places like the University of Chicago, there's a recognition that they're trying to recruit faculty that go beyond basic research and are solving market problems."
Flavin added that the scientists that they are recruiting "aren't satisfied" just doing research — they want to start companies around their ideas.
"In order to recruit those kinds of faculty and retain them, you need high-end startup facilities like our Hyde Park Labs to increase the chances that the ideas coming out of the university will find success," he said.
Flavin said this recent push to add more "investable faculty" to the Chicago ecosystem over the past few years is one of the main reasons the city's biotech ecosystem has picked up steam.
Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News named Chicagoland the No. 9 U.S. biopharma cluster this year in a measure of NIH funding, VC funding, lab space and number of jobs. The biotech publication highlighted the recent success of local AI-based companies and recent biotech developments including Hyde Park Labs in its ranking of Chicago. Still, Chicago ranked ninth in NIH funding and patents and 10th in lab space, though that number is expected to increase significantly through 2026.
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