The Incubator and IIT Tower at University Technology Park at IIT (UTP) – funded by the State of Illinois and IIT – have been designed and built on best practices learned over 20 years of incubator development and management. The partially built-out laboratory spaces in the Incubator allow clients to customize for individual needs. The spaces may also be modified to accommodate the complex needs of life science, engineering and chemistry-based companies.

The Incubator and IIT Tower offices have been established to serve technology-based companies in the early product- and customer-development stages that require lab and/or office space as well as convenient access to business development and university-based services. High-tech industry sectors that benefit include:

The Incubator focuses on companies that need sophisticated wet and dry laboratory facilities and can benefit from access to a variety of university resources. The Incubator includes 33,000 square feet of space for more than 30 start-up companies. There are 19 wet labs with adjacent office space and 15 dry labs/offices, ranging in size from 500 to 1,500 square feet.

Support for pre-clinical drug development and testing can also be arranged for client companies. The IIT Tower is appropriate for high-tech start-ups that need flexible office space and high Internet bandwidth. The IIT Tower has office space ranging from individual furnished offices to 16,000- square-foot floors.

The Incubator and IIT Tower are intentionally co-located with the labs of IIT’s top biomedical and chemical engineering faculty to permit the informal intellectual exchange and shared services so important for successful incubators. Clients will also benefit from a full array of support services for business and product development, as well as an opportunity to draw from a pool of exceptional student workers.