Central Illinois Named US Tech Hub for Biomanufacturing by Biden-Harris Administration

President Joe Biden announced Monday that the Illinois Fermentation and Agriculture Biomanufacturing Hub (iFAB) is among 31 designated Regional Innovation and Technology Hubs (Tech Hubs) by the U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA) — recognizing Central Illinois as a globally competitive center for innovation and job creation in biomanufacturing.

Led by the Integrated Bioprocessing Research Laboratory (IBRL) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the iFAB consortium includes 30 partner organizations representing academic, industry, government, and nonprofit partners committed to catalyzing industry growth in Champaign, Piatt, and Macon counties.

“The iFAB designation leverages IBRL’s five years of operational success. Companies come here to prove their technologies, and our aim is for them to remain in the region and establish early manufacturing facilities to progress from ideation to commercialization,” said iFAB principal investigator Beth Conerty, the Associate Director of Business Development at IBRL, part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences and The Grainger College of Engineering.

The EDA Tech Hubs program was authorized by the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 with the goal to boost economic growth, spur job creation, and ensure U.S. national security.

The precision fermentation industry is projected to reach $11.8 billion by 2028, with the potential to generate one million jobs by 2030. The EDA’s Tech Hub designation elevates the reputation and confidence needed to attract more funding, resources, companies, and talent in this space to Central Illinois.

Precision fermentation is a growing area of biomanufacturing that can turn local feedstocks, mainly corn and soybeans, into a variety of goods — including textiles, biofuels, food ingredients, polymers, pigments, and more domestically. This sustainable, scalable, and biological manufacturing process relies on microbes to convert sugars into high-value products.
 

Source: eurekalert.org

Photo Credit: iFAB