Jordan Losavio, co-founder of Baton Rouge-based tech startup Encore CO2, needed a custom part last month for a prototype that aims to transform carbon emissions into useful chemicals.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A local machine shop told her it would take nine days and $350 to make the part. Instead, she turned to a machinist 1,500 miles away at the Brooklyn, New York, headquarters of Newlab.<\/p>\n
Losavio handed over $50 and the design specifications. Twenty-four hours later, she had the iPhone-sized Teflon ring she needed for Encore\u2019s latest test.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you\u2019re a startup, you don\u2019t have weeks to wait,\u201d Losavio said. \u201cI need to be able to try something out, then say, \u2018Hey, pivot this by X percentage,\u2019 go back to that manufacturing hub and make it again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Avoiding those types of delays, as well as those cross-country calls for help, is a big reason why Louisiana officials are cheering the announcement that Newlab,\u00a0which runs startup accelerators in New York, Detroit and Uruguay, is coming to New Orleans.<\/p>\n
On Monday, Newlab announced that it\u2019s opening its newest hub for innovation at the site of the former Navy base in the Bywater neighborhood \u2014 part of a $50 million public-private partnership between the city, Shell Oil, Louisiana Economic Development, LSU and Greater New Orleans Inc.<\/p>\n
The company, which is also expanding to Saudi Arabia, helps start-ups trying to solve the climate crisis and other engineering problems take their ideas from the lab to the real world.<\/p>\n
A different kind of startup accelerator<\/p>\n
Louisiana has incubators focused on biotech, software and nonprofits. It also has co-working spaces sponsored by universities. But Newlab New Orleans will bring a particular mix of offerings that officials say could fill a critical niche for engineering-heavy startups.<\/p>\n
Elizabeth Maxwell, senior director of strategic initiatives at Idea Village, the city\u2019s first business accelerator, said she hopes the companies that Idea Village is working with can take advantage of Newlab\u2019s lab space and equipment.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully, there will be a revolving door,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Kris Khalil, head of the New Orleans BioInnovation Lab, said he sees \u201ctremendous opportunities for collaboration, where our biotech founders might benefit from Newlab\u2019s advanced prototyping and expertise, and in turn, we can offer specific insights for biotech or health applications in Newlab\u2019s portfolio.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Newlab facility will span 30,000 square feet and will be staffed with a team of experts in 3D printing,\u00a0advanced machining and more to help startups quickly\u00a0make the custom parts they need.<\/p>\n
The site will also include a set of industrial bays \u2014 equipped with overhead cranes and fume hoods \u2014 where start-ups can build and test their prototypes.<\/p>\n
That access to machinery and industrial space is hard to come by and means that startups can focus resources on scaling up research instead of spending it on building out their own workshop.<\/p>\n
Newlab, which calls itself a \u201cventure platform,\u201d also helps startups find investors, market their technologies and work with industrial partners to test out their designs in the real world.<\/p>\n
\u201cNewlabs\u2019 presence here is a bridge between where we\u2019ve been and where we\u2019re going,\u201d LED Secretary Susan Bourgeois said at Monday\u2019s announcement, calling it a \u201cmilestone in Louisiana\u2019s economic evolution.\u201d<\/p>\n
Why Newlab is coming to Louisiana<\/p>\n
The global push to decarbonize the economy can be measured in trillions of dollars, Josh Fleig, LED\u2019s chief innovation officer, said at Monday’s event. If Louisiana doesn\u2019t invest in new forms of energy production now it will cede its role in the future as a global leader in energy to places like Texas, Fleig said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Louisiana\u2019s massive industrial base produces an outsized amount of planet-warming emissions. That \u201cdeep industrial legacy\u201d is part of what attracted Newlabs to Louisiana, said David Belt, the company\u2019s co-founder and CEO. \u201cYou\u2019re sitting on one of the most strategic hubs of energy in the country,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Newlab New Orleans will initially focus on accelerating technologies across three different sectors: industrial power, carbon management and utilization, and shipping and maritime.<\/p>\n
Newlab focuses on working with \u201cdeep tech\u201d startups \u2014 a term for companies that are building hardware based on years of research and development.<\/p>\n
That includes Encore CO2, which is planning to move into Newlab New Orleans once it’s built. The start-up, which was born out of research done at LSU, is developing technology that transforms carbon emissions into high-value industrial chemicals with potential applications from consumer goods to agriculture.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Encore CO2 has already demonstrated that its propriety technology works on a small-scale in a laboratory, Losavio said. It\u2019s now trying to scale up that technology for an industrial setting. The company became a member of Newlab last year with funding from a Department of Energy grant.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Robert Twilley, LSU\u2019s vice president for research and economic development, said he hopes Newlab\u2019s expertise will help usher academic research into the market.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne thing we do a great job of is generating knowledge,\u201d Twilley said. \u201cWe don\u2019t do a very good job of commercializing it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Losavio, who is pursuing a PhD at LSU, said that in her many years on the Baton Rouge campus, she never once heard faculty or staff mention turning research into entrepreneurship.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a fundamental problem, and Newlab understand that\u2019s problem,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Newlab is expected to open its hub in New Orleans by the end of 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jordan Losavio, co-founder of Baton Rouge-based tech startup Encore CO2, needed a custom part last month for a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":104152,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3094],"tags":[51,3134,41978,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-104151","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entrepreneurship","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-entrepreneurship","10":"tag-hardwall","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114513197715531340","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104151\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}