It’s hard to believe that we opened our doors 3 years ago. With the help of a state grant and tremendous support from the Austin Community College administration, the ACC Bioscience Incubator has become a huge success. Being the first and only leaseable lab space in Austin, we had no idea what to expect. As we close out this grant, I’m happy to report that we have accomplished all of the milestones put before us, and then some.

We have grown from our first 3 incubated companies to 15 currently leasing space and 6 alumni companies. The industries represented span the fields of health, the environment and food. It was a desire for economic development in life sciences that fueled the funding and our companies have provided exactly that. The first year of operation, our member companies raised $1.2M with funds raised jumping to an impressive $42.6M in 2019!

When we opened, we hired our first 2 student interns to help us set up and maintain the facility and have since supported close to 40 students between the Incubator and our member companies. The acquired knowledge from their coursework coupled with the confidence, experience and hands-on skills they have gained has made them very attractive candidates to the growing life science sector here in Austin. I am thrilled to keep recommending them to the local employers…even if it keeps leaving me without student help.

This is a lot of words to express how proud we are of what we have accomplished and how excited we are to continue growing and serving this community!

Nancy Lyon
Interim Director