By Robin K. Wright
Some may think only of Lake Nona, as a place to take your friends and families on the weekends. Great restaurants, lots of fun outdoor activities, and a wonderful community. However, it is much more and hopefully, some of what we do out here at the UCF Life Sciences Incubator will shine some light on that. Lake Nona is also home to one of the nation’s leading medical hubs of research, technology, and innovation, quite like no other.
UCF’s Life Sciences Incubator, part of the UCF Incubator Innovation District, is located in the heart of Lake Nona’s “Medical City.” This ecosystem is designed to be a premier location for health, medical care, research, and development, as well as education and innovation. Being that Lake Nona is home to some of the nation’s leading hospitals, strategic partners, forward-thinking technologies, and wellbeing, UCF knew several years ago that we needed to be part of this amazing come-to-life vision and have a life science incubator presence here. The UCF Life Sciences Incubator is unique in that it has been created to not only work with, nurture, and strategically help startup companies, but to do the same for existing companies as well. Many of them have relocated to us from other parts of the state and country as well as outside of the U.S.
Located in the Guidewell building our facility is one of a kind for UCF and Central Florida. While we offer shared equipment space and state-of-the-art labs, it really is our clients that help make us so special and unique. Our clients range in a wide variety from clinical trial researchers, precision cancer diagnostics, point of care (POC) diagnostics capable of attaching to smartphone devices, non-stop virus and bacteria protection harnessing nanotechnology, as well as clients that have a state-of-the-art fully integrated smart lab that specializes in HRT & wellness and molecular testing. And this is just the tip of the iceberg of what these companies are capable of and will be accomplishing. A few of our current clients work with NASA and will very shortly be lending some of their approved experiments to be rocketed off into space for further testing.
Our Life Sciences Incubator clients are here to create ways to help save lives, make healthcare better, and better our environment. One of the many benefits that we have here in the Lake Nona ecosystem allows us, UCF, the opportunity to work with other Universities, hospitals, research councils, health and wellness organizations, and connect our clients not only to these networking opportunities but the many ways for further and continuous growth and collaboration.
