From the Dean

The UEL incubator--like Earl Bakken's garage 50 years later

In the early 1950s, Earl Bakken, a recent University of Minnesota engineering graduate, launched Medtronic and the medical device industry when he created the first pacemaker in his garage.

Today, that industry is looking to biology for the next generation of heart healing therapies. But it will take more than spare parts, pliers, and a garage to produce them. Biology has become an engineering discipline, but the spare parts are molecules, the tools are enzymes, and garages just don’t make good labs. I like to think of the new business incubator, University Enterprise Laboratories (UEL), as a biotech garage.

The idea for UEL began to “incubate” five years ago when faculty member Perry Hackett told me he was planning to leave for a California university where he would have the opportunity to develop his own biotech inventions. We found a lab to serve as incubator space for him and he stayed. But, I realized that many states and universities were providing similar opportunities for faculty— Minnesota was falling behind.

I was particularly concerned about what this meant for our students. They were at risk of losing some of their best teachers. And, without the same opportunities for research and internships as students in other states, they would be unable to compete for good jobs.

Fortunately, I found partners who shared my concerns: Mayor Randy Kelly, Kent Larson of Xcel Energy, and Jerry Fischer of the University of Minnesota Foundation. Some of Minnesota’s most respected companies soon joined us: 3M, Allina, Medtronic, Boston Scientific, Guidant, Dorsey & Whitney, Surmodics, and Ecolab. I am grateful to them for their vision and support.

I hope that UEL is the start of a strong and enduring relationship between the University, industry, and government to promote the growth of Minnesota’s biotechnology industry. By continuing to work together, we can accomplish even more. Our priority should be to create a joint plan for where we want to be in five years. We could take a cue from Iowa, which commissioned Battelle Institute to conduct an assessment of its strengths and weaknesses and to make recommendations. As a result, they have a very clear idea of their next steps.

Key to this planning is to recognize the growing number of ways that biotechnology—which is essentially engineering at the molecular level—can be applied in industry and agriculture, and in creating renewable energy. It’s not just about medicine anymore.

Minnesota is in a very strong position to capitalize on the transition from biomedical to biological engineering because of our strengths in medicine and technology, and because of the entrepreneurial spirit in the Twin Cities. I look forward to seeing how this will unfold.

Robert Elde, Dean
College of Biological Sciences
belde@cbs.umn.edu