Southern Illinois University Edwardsville has been awarded $1.9 million in state funding to expand lab capabilities at its National Corn-to-Ethanol Research Center (NCERC).
The grant is from the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity through the Rebuild Illinois Wet Lab Capital program, an initiative to boost public/private investments and increase access to modern lab space to make the state more competitive in life sciences.
NCERC was one of eight laboratories at universities and incubators across the state that received a total of $15.4 million through the program, state officials said this week. Applicants who submitted capital projects to the program, launched last year, were selected after a competitive review.
NCERC, located in University Park on SIUE's campus, works on development and commercialization of biofuels, specialty chemicals and other renewable compounds. It hosts a fully functional dry grind pilot plant and laboratories are equipped with advanced biofuels capabilities including corn fractionation and pretreatment, and a scalable fermentation suite. NCERC's fermentation and processing capabilities range from bench- to pilot-scale, which allows companies planning to take their biotechnology to market to perform all their research at the same facility using the center's researchers, scientists and engineers, according to officials.
NCERC, opened in 2003 using $20 million in state and federal funding, has since expanded its fermentation capabilities to reach new markets, such as corn-to-bioproducts research.
The research center plans to use the award funding to "dramatically expand its intermediate-scale R&D capabilities," SIUE officials said.
In addition to the state grant, the Illinois Corn Marketing Board, a longtime supporter of NCERC that funds multiple research projects annually, contributed $50,000 to NCERC's expansion project, Jackie Hayes, NCERC's director of business development and client relations, told the Business Journal.
“The equipment that will be purchased using these award funds will be placed in NCERC’s Fermentation Laboratory and Fermentation Suite, two areas of NCERC’s facility that receive the most attention from startups and companies doing cutting-edge research in the biorenewables sector,” John Caupert, NCERC’s executive director, said in a statement. “We’re extremely excited by the expansion of our research capabilities and look forward to leveraging these assets to attract new clients. We also want to thank our partners on this project, especially the Illinois Corn Growers Association who has generously contributed to the matching funds on the project.”
Mark Wilson, chairman of the Illinois Corn Marketing Board and a farmer from Toulon, Illinois, said, "We look forward to the new consumer industrial and health care products from corn empowered by this investment.”
SIUE will dedicate part of the grant funding to expanding the analytical capabilities at the Biotechnology Laboratory Incubator, officials said. The incubator currently houses the Shimadzu Innovation Laboratory at SIUE (SILS), a partnership between the university and Shimadzu, a Japanese science and analytical technology company.
Here are all the projects being funded through the $15.4 million in state Wet Lab grants:
- Back of the Yards Algae Sciences LLC, Chicago: $250,000
- Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago: $1,499,569
- Northwestern University, Chicago: $3,000,000
- NuMat Technologies, Skokie: $3,500,000
- Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, Chicago: $2,007,000
- Southern Illinois University Carbondale: $2,734,008
- Southern Illinois University Edwardsville: $1,875,569.00
- University of Illinois Research Park LLC, Urbana-Champaign: $550,000
