Executive director of Purdue's Discovery Park to join IBJ life sciences panel discussion
INDIANAPOLIS - Purdue University Discovery Park executive director Alan Rebar will join a panel of experts in a discussion next week about the outlook for Indiana's life sciences industry.
Rebar, also senior associate vice president of research, will participate in the Indianapolis Business Journal Power Breakfast Series on Life Sciences at 7:45 a.m. Wednesday (July 13), at the JW Marriott Indianapolis, 10 S. West St.
Other featured panelists are Richard DiMarchi, the Cox Professor of Biochemistry and the Gill Chair in Biomolecular Sciences at Indiana University; David Johnson, president and chief executive officer at BioCrossroads; and Oscar Moralez, managing partner at Stepstone Business Partners.
"Indiana's research universities - including Purdue, Indiana University and the University of Notre Dame - give us a strong advantage when it comes to growing, attracting and supporting our state's $44 billion life sciences industry," said Rebar, who was named to the list of Who's Who in Life Sciences by the business journal in May. "Yet we must realize the global pressures we face in strengthening and expanding the bridge that brings together established life sciences employers, research universities, venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and local and state business constituents."
The four panelists will address the questions:
- What's the pace of life science entrepreneurism in Indiana?
- How is Indiana poised to address the personalized medicine trend?
- What's the outlook on seed and venture capital?
- What categories of work under way at university research parks could spur new commercial opportunities in the next few years?
For registration and details about the event, go to https://www.ibj.com/ibj/event?eventId=159. Sponsors are the Purdue Research Park, BioCrossroads, French Lick Resort, Harding Poorman Group, Indiana Health Industry Forum and Network Storage Inc.
Over the next decade, Purdue plans to invest more than $164 million to construct a Life and Health Sciences Quadrangle on its West Lafayette campus, bringing together researchers in a common space and promoting cutting-edge work in biosciences. Purdue will add or expand five buildings on the south and west ends of campus for a:
- $25 million drug discovery building.
- $53.7 million health and human sciences facility.
- $14.9 million project to expand, by two-thirds, Discovery Park's Bindley Biosciences Center, which is dedicated to cancer research and life sciences.
- $12.5 million acoustics research addition to the Ray W. Herrick Laboratories.
- $58 million agriculture and life sciences building.
Through its mission to move research more quickly from the laboratory to the marketplace, Purdue also is helping create jobs, launch companies and spur economic development across Indiana. More than 4,000 people are employed at the 200 companies, many in the high-tech and life sciences arena, in the Purdue Research Park statewide network.
The latest, Advion BioServices unveiled its 22,000-square-foot facility on June 28 at the Purdue Research Park at Ameriplex near Indianapolis International Airport. Employing 48 people, Advion will handle contract bioanalytical research for Eli Lilly and Co. and other life sciences firms.
A June 2011 report by BioCrossroads shows that a rapidly growing life sciences industry has a $44 billion total impact on Indiana's economy. The report, "Indiana's Life Sciences Industry: 2002-2010 - Tracking Progress and Charting the Course for Continued Success," notes that in 2009, Indiana's life sciences exports hit $7.4 billion, ranking third-highest in the United State behind only California and Texas.
The report also highlights the progress of Indiana's life sciences industry:
- More than $600 million in philanthropic funding has bolstered the life sciences community since 2000.
- More than 1,900 life sciences-related patents have been issued to Indiana holders since 2004.
- From 2005-2010, Indiana opportunities received nearly $1.8 billion in capital investment for new and existing life sciences companies.
"Indiana now has the third-highest life sciences employment concentration nationally, adding more than 8,800 new jobs to the industry since 2002 and boosting this sector's employment by 21 percent," Rebar said. "And that growth has come amid some of the toughest economic conditions we have seen in some time."
Appointed Discovery Park's executive director in 2005, Rebar took the helm after the building and startup phase, funded in large part in 2001 by a $26 million gift from Lilly Endowment Inc. Discovery Park comprises a number of centers including the Bindley Bioscience Center, Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship, Birck Nanotechnology Center, Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering and the Oncological Sciences Center.
Rebar earned his doctorate of veterinary medicine and his doctoral degree from Purdue. Following a brief stint in mixed animal practice, he became an assistant professor of veterinary clinical pathology at Purdue and later an experimental pathologist at the Lovelace Inhalation Toxicology Research Institute in Albuquerque, N.M.
He returned to Purdue in 1979 as an associate professor, becoming a full professor in 1983; head of the Department of Veterinary Pathobiology, 1993-1996; associate dean for research, 1989-1996; and dean of the School of Veterinary Medicine, 1996-2005.
Marking its 10th anniversary this fall, Discovery Park has generated more than $500 million in sponsored-research through its teams of interdisciplinary researchers addressing major challenges in life sciences, nanotechnology, energy, the environment, healthcare and other areas.
Through additional gifts and grants totaling nearly $250 million in its first decade, Discovery Park now has some of the most advanced research facilities and sophisticated equipment on a university campus anywhere in the United States.
Writer: Phillip Fiorini, 765-496-3133, pfiorini@purdue.edu
Source: Alan Rebar, 765-496-6625, rebar@purdue.edu
Related websites:
Purdue School of Veterinary Medicine