Indiana University President Michael A. McRobbie announced today that Lilly Endowment Inc. has awarded the school $15 million over five years to establish an advanced info tech center.

The Pervasive Technology Institute, as it is called, will be one of the first tenants of IU's new Bloomington-based incubator for tech start-ups.

McRobbie called it the "logical next step" and said it would be a catalyst in expanding all of our research enterprises within the university and state."

The PTI's basic strategy is to help scientists harnessing the powers of supercomputing in their research, give data-dependent meteorologists tools to interpret data for better weather forecasts, and assist in the cybersecurity and health fields.

The school made the announcement as it broke ground on a $10 million facility designed to accommodate both life science and Internet technology start-ups.

The 40,000-square-foot facility in Bloomington is being built on university property at 10th Street and the Ind. 45/46 bypass.

Part of what he calls Innovate Indiana, McRobbie envisions the project as a means to expand economic development across the state behind one central office, the IU Research and Technology Corp., which is now charged with coordinating and facilitating interaction between public research and private entrepreneurship.

The undertaking is meant to give a boost to research scientists to market discoveries, McRobbie said in a news release. "Ultimately, all of Indiana will benefit from the jobs and economic vitality generated by this collaboration between public research and private entrepreneurship," he said.

The new Bloomington site complements IU's 67,500-square-foot incubator on the Canal in Downtown Indianapolis, a facility that currently stands at 98 percent capacity with 23 tenants.

The facility is to be completed by July.

IURTC president Anthony Armstrong will oversee both the Indianapolis and Bloomington incubators.

"This is an extremely exciting time for the economic development arm at IU," he said in a news release.


Pervasive Technology isn't a new idea. Its research labs were created in 1999 with a $29.9 million grant from the same Lilly Endowment Inc. Each of that project's six working laboratories have gone on to generate new spin-off corporations, and more are expected.


Besides Bloomington, Pervasive will have a facility at IUPUI. It plans to work with other university initiatives and the Indiana Economic Development Corp., TechPoint, BioCrossroads, Purdue University and others.