Wisconsin’s biohealth tech hub will receive $49 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s
Economic Development Administration.
Last October, Wisconsin became one of 31 regions in the United States to be designated as a Regional Technology and Innovations Hub, focused on the biohealth industry.
This designation is part of the national Tech Hubs program, an economic development initiative designed to spur regional innovation and job creation by strengthening a region’s capacity to manufacture, commercialize and deploy technology.
As part of phase one of the Tech Hubs program, Wisconsin earned a $350,000 grant last fall that was used for further strategic development. The $49 million grant is the second and final phase of funding. Wisconsin is now one of 12 federally recognized tech hubs across the country that received a second phase of funding. Wisconsin’s tech hub was also awarded
a $7.5 million supporting grant from the state in February.
"What we've seen with the opportunity around the tech hub is collaboration between Madison and Milwaukee to think about what the future of personalized health care is," said
Missy Hughes, CEO of
WEDC. "That collaboration has now been recognized by the federal government and the funding that we are going to be receiving is going to have tremendous impacts on Wisconsin's economy and on the region's economy."
The investment is expected to create more than 30,000 direct jobs, 110,000 indirect jobs, and have a $9 billion impact on the state over the next decade. Jobs will cross sectors and could include everything from manufacturing work to research in high-tech labs.
"Wisconsin's biohealth tech hub will be an economic driver for the state," said
Sen. Tammy Baldwin during a Monday press conference. "It will help entrepreneurs scale up their operations and grow. It will help expand lab space and support new research. It will support people at all educational levels get the skills they need to land a job in this emerging sector, and it will serve as a central hub for private and public partners in biotech to coordinate and collaborate so that our state can drive innovation that benefits people around the world."
Last August,
a consortium of 15 public and private partners submitted an application to the Economic Development Administration seeking the tech hub designation.
The consortium aimed to gather stakeholders around a strategy to leverage Wisconsin’s momentum in biohealth technology and to develop and facilitate a shared initiative.
Wisconsin’s tech hub specializes in the areas of biotechnology, genomics, medical devices and synthetic biology.
"This is connecting our manufacturing, our supply chain and our biohealth companies," said
Lisa Johnson, CEO of
BioForward Wisconsin, the lead member of the consortium. “It really is impactful and really starts to set Wisconsin apart from others.”
