High-Tech Future
Technology businesses thriving in Lafayette area.

by Kathy Mayer

(August 2002) - Take a growing cluster of science and technology businesses. Add Purdue University’s new encouragement of entrepreneurs and its expansions of research facilities. Include the recruiting efforts of Greater Lafayette Progress Inc. and a strategic planning grant from Central Indiana Corporate Partnership, and you have the basis for Greater Lafayette’s high-tech future, community leaders believe.

"We have a lot of advantages for technology-based businesses here, particularly ones that desire the opportunity to be close to technology developments at the university," says Mike Brooks, president of Greater Lafayette Progress Inc., Tippecanoe County’s economic-development organization. He points to facilities owned by Purdue Research Foundation and facilities developed by private investors in both Lafayette and West Lafayette.

"When you compare our occupancy costs to metropolitan areas such as Chicago, it’s relatively inexpensive here," Brooks says. "And the advantage of being able to work with researchers within the university is a real plus."

Bioanalytical Systems Inc. tops the list of businesses that are already succeeding and the energy the cluster creates to attract others.

Founded in 1974 and today employing 175 at its West Lafayette headquarters, the pharmaceutical-development company provides contract research services and analytical systems to pharmaceutical, drug-development and medical-device companies. Construction of a three-story, $5 million expansion is under way to accommodate automated robotics and mass spectrometers for pre-clinical research services. And it’s just announced it will acquire two companies–PharmaKinetics Laboratories Inc. in Baltimore, Maryland, and LC Resources Inc. in Walnut Creek, Calif., broadening its contract research services technology base and adding new strategic locations.

Another with longevity is SSCI Inc., a 36-employee medical research company focusing on pharmaceutical and industrial chemical solids founded in 1993 that’s earned the Indiana Growth 100 award. Cantilever Technologies, with 40 employees, launched in 1999 to market software that organizes data from independent design and supply chain systems into shared information that improves product flow through the design, engineering and manufacturing processes.

Among the newer companies with promise are the biotechnology company Endocyte Inc., which is developing a vitamin-based diagnostic and drug-targeting system it hopes to have on the market in five to seven years (see cover story). The company has 20 employees and another 20 contract professionals on the job. CurXceL is one of the latest to come to town, choosing West Lafayette over Chicago for its research work that involves isolating compounds from natural plant products in the search for a cure for Alzheimer’s disease. Integrated Process Solutions, a software company that will help industrial plants meet regulatory requirements, is another startup, thanks to pre-seed capital through Purdue Research Foundation.

Even more than facilities and funding, the university and its foundation are supporting high-tech ventures with encouragement, says Pete Kissinger, chairman and CEO of Bioanalytical Systems who came to greater Lafayette as a Purdue chemistry professor.

"Step by step over the past 15 years, Purdue has been transformed from a university that held faculty and student involvement in business with considerable suspicion or dismay to one where these involvements are welcomed and even encouraged," he says.

The university also has been more aggressive in licensing its discoveries and inventions to the marketplace, increasing licenses by 30 percent in 2001 to achieve a record year. Those licenses spawned 10 new companies, twice the previous year’s. One was Griffin Analytical Technologies Inc., which is developing a miniaturized, portable mass spectrometer at its Purdue Research Park facility. The device eliminates the need to bring samples to a lab for analysis, and would be used in chemical process monitoring, among other applications.

Another factor fueling the potential for high-tech growth is construction of new research facilities on the Purdue campus, expected to lead to discoveries that will spawn new business opportunities.

The largest is the university’s new $100 million, 40-acre Discovery Park. It will include four buildings: the Birck Nanotechnology Center, a bioscience/engineering center, an e-enterprises center and a center for entrepreneurship. The 71,000-square-foot nanotechnology center, at a cost of $56.4 million, opens first, with construction expected to begin in January 2003 and be completed by fall 2004. It will house interdisciplinary research at the atomic scale, in what’s dubbed "the science of the small." The $7 million entrepreneurial center will be the next built. It will include an innovation realization lab, where engineering and management graduate students will learn how research fits in with social and commercial needs.

"These centers have enormous scientific and economic potential," Purdue University president Martin Jischke–who’s been on board two years–said at the unveiling of the Discovery Park plans. "They offer Purdue the chance to increase research grants and contracts, retain our most talented faculty and turn research findings into new processes and products that help to advance the economy."

Greater Lafayette Progress, Inc. isn’t waiting for those developments to be completed before seeking high-tech companies. For the last couple of years, the economic-development group has been attending high-tech and science industry shows. That’s where Brooks got the lead on CurXceL, which led to its choice of greater Lafayette. And it’s now fine-tuning its recruiting approach, thanks to the help of the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership grant. The grant is funding a study of Purdue’s strengths. The study will be paired with a community assessment already completed to create an economic-development strategic plan.

"At this point, we anticipate life science, information technology and advanced manufacturing will be the focus," Brooks says. "Based on the strengths of the university we are aware of, we believe life science is a clear focus we need to have."

Where will this take the community? "While it will be nearly impossible to match the two coasts, we can do very well here," Kissinger at BAS says of the potential for high-tech and science-based corporate success in greater Lafayette. "We have a favorable cost structure, a great work ethic, a world-class university and excellent quality of life. A university environment is where knowledge-based businesses naturally locate. This will continue."