UA plots incubator drive

University of Arizona’s tech incubator has been renamed University of Arizona Center for Innovation (UACI) to reflect the university’s support for the regional entrepreneurial ecosystem, Arizona Daily Star reported on Saturday.
Founded in 2003 and previously known as Arizona Center for Innovation, the incubator provides facilities and services to early and growth-stage spinouts and startups.
The rebrand is intended to demonstrate the incubator’s bonds to the university, especially its commercialisation office, Tech Launch Arizona (TLA), which has been praised for spawning 14 businesses each year on average since 2012-13.
Aside from the new name, UACI will also expand its regional remit through new partnerships with external incubators in Oro Valley, Sahuarita and Vail, all of which lie close to Tucson in the surrounding Pima County.
The incubator will also gain additional space in UA’s Tech Park, at a newly-developed university block that will also house TLA operations.
The revamp follows the appointment of Carol Stewart, previously chief executive of academic research cluster body Association of University Research Parks, as president of UACI in January 2019.
Stewart, who also serves as associate-president of Tech Parks Arizona, the university’s research park subsidiary, brought Eric Smith on board as UACI executive director last month.
Smith is an alumnus of the university and was previously manager of TLA’s commercialisation network. He also once represented the city of Tucson in a commercialisation alliance with TLA and technology development firm Aztera.
Carol Stewart told Arizona Daily Star that UACI was now integral to the local entrepreneurial ecosystem, estimating that only a third of its members were direct university spinouts.
She noted that while the university had put about $5m into the incubator since 2003, even more could be done to realise its full potential.