Lilly Tench promotes new lab space for Spark Innovation Center
Additional space will become available when Innovation South opens in late 2024.
As Lilly Tench began her presentation late Thursday afternoon at the monthly “Innovation Crossroads Founders Forum,” she quipped that the Spark Innovation Center was launched in 2020 which was “a really good time.” It was obviously a reference to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Today, the Berea, KY native and Berea College graduate is Director of the Center and its Spark Cleantech Accelerator. The former will be expanding its available lab space by three when the new Innovation South Building at the University of Tennessee (UT) Research Park opens later this fall, and Tench has been spreading the word that the new space offers opportunities for hard tech companies in the area.
She told attendees at the networking event that the program helps start-ups that have technologies that are “hard to bring to market . . . hard to scale” but are solving “big problems.” The ideal candidates align with the research priorities of UT, Knoxville which are:
- Energy and environment;
- Applied artificial intelligence;
- Materials and manufacturing;
- Health and human wellness; and
- Future mobility.
“We are primarily looking to serve companies needing advanced lab capabilities,” Tench said, adding that one of the selection criteria for the overall program is the critical need for lab space.
The application deadline is September 10 at this link.
As noted in this spotlight teknovation.biz article from 2020, Tench started work with the Knoxville Entrepreneur Center soon after she moved to Knoxville to pursue dual Master’s degrees. Her passion has been sustainability and the environment, and Tench published a book earlier this year. Titled Good Business: An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Creating a Better World, it is about the lessons she has learned working with entrepreneurs who are using business as an opportunity to do good in the world and are creating solutions to problems like climate change, homelessness, and resource scarcity.
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