Links Referenced:Spark Innovation Center: https://www.tnresearchpark.org/spark/TranscriptRickey McCallum: Welcome back to The Research Park Chronicles podcast, where we’re documenting the exciting innovations of the University of Tennessee Research Park. I’m your host, Rickey McCallum. For this episode, we’re looking into the progressive and inspiring work being done at the Spark Innovation Center, which is currently housed inside the university’s Institute for Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Facility at the Research Park. Spark Innovation Center focuses on entrepreneurship development and commercialization of regional technology-based startup companies. With a focus on clean technologies, a space in which Knoxville was rated as the 16th cleantech hub in the country, Spark has quickly become a significant contributor to the efforts here in the East Tennessee region.The Spark Innovation Center is designed to be a place where selected startups come to meet some of their fundamental needs, primarily those looking for wet lab space, or sophisticated prototyping shops, with capabilities for providing high-level mentorship in business model development, financial planning, and investor readiness at its core. As a result, these young startups have access to some of the best entrepreneurial leadership the university has to offer. One of the leaders in the center is Tom Rogers, CEO of the UT Research Park, who sat down with us to give an overview of the Spark Innovation Center, its mission, and its purpose.Tom Rogers: I became completely convinced that working with entrepreneurs, helping them find ways to take new ideas to the marketplace is a key to success in our local economy. We’re blessed with a national laboratory, our Research 1 university, a culture of ideas being valued, and putting together a support structure around that has really great potential for the future of this region. So, I think a lot of the challenges that entrepreneurs face is interaction with potential customers, spending time doing customer discovery, understanding, will the dogs eat the dog food? We have a lot of great technology around here and I’ve seen hundreds of would-be entrepreneurs talk with great passion about what they do and their little gizmo, and ‘look, it works’ without ever considering, does it solve a need in the marketplace? And that’s really one of the primary things that we emphasize, not just here at Spark, but in the other business accelerators in the region as well. Try to get real. Try to understand that your idea may be the greatest thing in the world, but if customers aren’t going to buy it, it’s not going to be a successful company.Rickey McCallum: With a passion for getting early tech companies off the ground, the Spark Innovation Center and its programs are proving to be the perfect place for the region to manifest itself as a leader in tech. Another key figure in this regard is John Bruck, the director of the Spark Innovation Center. John’s history of success in engineering and his commitment to the Knoxville area, as well as his role as mentor and investor puts him at the cutting edge of helping the startups that are associated with the center and his two primary programs to ensure its success.John Bruck: I am drawn to tech-based companies that are in their earliest stages. And there are really what has grown to be a hub of technological innovation and entrepreneurship here in Knoxville. I think one of the popular business journals has ranked Knoxville as the 16th largest innovation hub in the country, and that’s because of programs that have grown out of the University of Tennessee, that have grown out of Oak Ridge National Lab.Rickey McCallum: An integral part of the local technology community, there are a handful of programs across the region in different organizations that have contributed assistance to help foster these young startups. One notable program is the Innovation Crossroads, housed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and most recently Techstars, which is a co-sponsored program between ORNL, TVA, and the University of Tennessee, all of which are working in collaboration with the Spark Innovation Center to create the ideal environment for tech startups to grow and hopefully call East Tennessee home.John Bruck: Along with the Innovation Crossroads program, and particularly at UT and now the Research Park, we are positioned to really be a focus for early-stage tech-based companies and that’s specifically what has drawn me here, this particular region—specifically Knoxville region—along with the many sources of high intellect and innovation. The challenge that it faces is one of being able to provide the space that’s required by tech startups—and by that, I mean laboratory space—and tech-based mentorship and access to tech-oriented capital. But what we saw was the need for those things to match against companies that were growing out of the University of Tennessee and graduating from the University of Tennessee, companies that were graduating from the Innovation Crossroads program, and being able to place those companies into space that met their needs, was affordable, that was readily available, and could provide them with the other kinds of support that they needed to make the company successful. So, if they need programming, for example, a series of workshops on leadership or financial modeling or customer discovery, we’re equipped to help those companies, along with providing them with physical space that matches their needs. So, what I think Spark did that is turning out to be quite successful is matching what we offer with what our customers really require, which truly is even less than that we teach to our startups themselves. So, the Spark Innovation Center is an early-stage organization, and it has begun to really meet those needs.Rickey McCallum: Within the Innovation Center, there are two major programs that help early startups get the assistance that they need to flourish in their respective areas of expertise. The first is the Spark Innovation Center, and the second is the Spark Cleantech Accelerator. Both programs bring specifically crafted support for cleantech startup companies in various stages of growth. Let’s look at the Spark Innovation Center, Spark’s flagship program.This incubator is meaningfully crafted for early tech startup companies who must identify a clear need in cleantech marketplace and are producing a product that demonstrates a solid product-market fit. Companies in the program often build a working prototype before engaging with initial customers, of which there are some pretty interesting ones, to say the least. The incubator is designed to allow these companies the room to scale, both in terms of product and in capital. While this program serves as a catalyst for helping these young companies, at the end of the day, it’s the companies themselves who need to strive for excellence. For John, those companies need to demonstrate certain strengths and attributes.John Bruck: The programs need to be collaborative. In fact, I like the mantra, “Collaborate first.” And we do. So, the three technical hubs which are Innovation Crossroads is the oldest, Techstars, and the Spark Innovation Center. The directors of those organizations are actually very close, they know each other, and we collaborate on things like how to increase our number of applications and the quality of our applications.Rickey McCallum: With an emphasis on collaboration at the forefront, John fi...

For this exciting episode of Research Park Chronicles, we’re steering away from the park’s older history, and into its more recent! Over the past few years the Research Park has been a pioneering center for a wide array of work, to include work with the University of Tennessee Medical Center. Now, with the innovations that are going on with orthopedic research and care, the park is at the forefront of another fascinating world of research. Rickey has a wide ranging conversation with members involved in the newly founded Advance Orthopedic Institute on the research that they are conducting at the park. Rickey guides us through the UT Medical Centers role in teaching new residents, their dedication to the local community. We also get insight into the incredible collaborations and partnership in orthopedics, and the leaps they’re taking toward the future of orthopedic practices at the Institute as it nears its opening date! In this episode we cover: 00:00:00 - Introduction 00:06:20 - Collaborations and Partnerships 00:09:45 - The Advance Orthopedic Institute 00:16:40 - Breakdown of the Institute 00:23:30 - Working with Multiple Parties 00:28:40 - A Natural Fit 00:31:00 - The Future/Outro

TranscriptRickey: Hello, and welcome back to The Research Park Chronicles. I’m your host, Rickey McCallum, and throughout this podcast, I’m going to lead you on a journey through the gateway to collaboration. We talked about what a research park does in the last episode, and today, we’re going to dive into how one came to be here in Knoxville, Tennessee, and what it’s already accomplished. This modern research park at the University of Tennessee would have never been possible without the vision of one influential scholar. But more on that in just a minute.To fully appreciate and understand UT’s Research Park, it’s important to start by looking back in time to understand the land’s Native American roots. At one corner of the University of Tennessee Research Park lies a serene bank of the Tennessee River. As researchers, we’re always focused on developing new and exciting projects, but every now and again, it’s worth taking a moment to pause and reflect.As we look over the waterway, Sequoia Hill stands in the distance. And with the familiar sounds of running a creek and birds chirping, it’s easy to forget that behind us is a collection of modern buildings that make up UT’s Research Park. What was this campus like before these buildings were built, before it was a dairy farm, and before the city had ownership of the property, back hundreds and even thousands of years ago, at a time when the land was inhabited by Native Americans? For that answer, I asked Tom Rogers, the current President and CEO of the University of Tennessee Research Park, who knows quite a bit about the site’s ancient history.Tom: The site itself is 200 acres, but as they did the environmental scans required to get the development underway, only 75 acres of that 200 acres is really developable. The rest of it is down near the river and has been preserved in perpetuity because of its archeological significance. As they did that original archeological investigation, they actually found artifacts that date back to 6000 BC.Rickey: The university works with Dr. Candace Hollenbeck, a professor of archeology at UT, to help preserve that history and culture, and so we decided to visit her in her element on site at the Research Park to learn a little bit more. And to help us put this area into its historical context, Dr. Hollenbeck starts at the beginning.Candace: Here in East Tennessee, pretty much anything flat next to a river is going to have several thousand years—five to ten thousand years—of occupation on it. That’s the case here, too.Rickey: Dr. Hollenbeck says that this land has changed a lot over the past 10,000 years, with river movement and flooding, creating ‘build up’ as she calls it.Candace: So, if we were to take a big backhoe and dig straight down right here, we could probably go down about four meters or so and maybe hit the bottom, maybe hit 10,000 years ago, or maybe not. Even going down four meters—12 feet or so—we may hit around 6000 years ago and could probably keep going. And then, river stabilized, probably around 5000 years ago or such, and that’s when we start seeing people, even to 3000 years ago, and people could become more sedentary.Rickey: There have even been some interesting archeological finds from these digs, says Dr. Hollenbeck.Candace: There are these Mississippian time period villages down here houses, house structures, that are dotted along that area. And so those are really neat. They date to around 800 years ago or so. And so, those are probably some of the most exciting parts of it. You know, there’s a little hamlet and then some individual farmsteads, homesteads in between. So, kind of imagining those communities I think is fun.Rickey: Once people started to settle at the site, we can see their history in the archeological record. Dr. Hollenbeck breaks that down for us as the riverbanks transition over into farmland over the years.Candace: Tennessee in the mid-south is one of eight to ten independent centers of domestication around the world. So, native peoples here, around 4000 years ago, domesticated a set of crops, including sunflower seeds, which we know today, squashes—a little bit earlier than 4000 years ago, even—another one called sumpweed, which is very similar to sunflower, and then [quinapod 00:04:23], which is similar to quinoa. Quinoa is the South American cousin, but people up here domesticated a similar relative of it, too. And so they settled down and became farmers around that time.Rickey: These early cultures were just one part of the history of the site. Later tribes would come to the region as well.Candace: We see some similarities and some continuities from those Mississippian cultures to the Cherokee, historical Cherokee cultures, and such, but they are also changes and things, too. It gets really complicated. But yes, a lot of shifting and a lot of movement of people, a lot of trade, even back 5000, 10,000 years ago. A lot of people moving. And we’re so used to our cars and such, we forget how—we have no concept, we have no concept of how they could have relatively quickly gotten across the landscape. These rivers and creeks and such are a huge avenue as well.Rickey: Artifacts are still being discovered on site and Dr. Hollenback and her team are taking measures to help further protect them.Candace: Whether we entice students to become archeologists or not, I think just to give them that appreciation of the history and kind of have pride in it so that we can protect archeological sites like this one here. We’re really lucky because we do have this overlay and UT Research Park that is committed to preserving that area.Rickey: The university is working on ways to formally recognize indigenous people and their native connection to the land upon which UT now stands, such as through a committee tasked with drafting a land acknowledgement statement. Though this is still being created, several members of the committee have begun to use this statement that, reads, “The land upon which the University of Tennessee-Knoxville is built is part of the traditional territory of the Tsalagi [Sal a ghee] peoples, now Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, and the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma. The Tsoyahá [Soy Ah Hey] peoples of Yuchi, Muscogee (Creek) Nation, and Shawnee peoples (Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma and the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, and the Shawnee Tribe).”As Dr. Hollenback has illustrated, farming is nothing new to the landscape of the park. Farming came to dominate the site for thousands of years. So, here’s Tom again to tell us a little bit more about that.Tom: Back in the 1890s, this property was actually sold by the city of Knoxville to a private developer who laid out a plan for a residential development that he called Cherokee. And we think that’s where the name originally came from. He actually built a bridge from what is now Sequoia Hills over into the park, and had a layout that looked very much like Sequoia Hills. This city eventually took the property back for non-payment of taxes, but the bridge stayed for nearly 40 years until it became so dilapidated that it was torn down. You can still see the abutments of the bridge on both sides of the park. So, that was an interesting beginning. The city then sold the land to the university and it became a dairy farm. That’s what I remember it as when I came to this town many years ago.Rickey: The 2...

Links in TranscriptUT Research Park: https://www.tnresearchpark.org/Volkswagen: https://www.vw.com/University of Tennessee, Knoxville: https://www.utk.edu/ Oak Ridge National Laboratory: https://www.ornl.gov/ TranscriptRickey McCallum: So, what are research parks? Why do we need them? What makes collaboration between educational institutions, public entities, and private companies so powerful and finding innovative, adaptive, and real-world solutions? This is the story of the University of Tennessee Research Park, and it's going to talk about that exact thing. So, welcome to the Research Park Chronicles with Rickey McCallum.Rickey McCallum: Hello and welcome to the very first episode of Research Park Chronicles. I’m your host Rickey McCallum and throughout this podcast, I’m going to take you on a journey through the gateway to collaboration. We’re going to talk about why university research parks are so integral to innovation, how the UT Research Park came about here in Knoxville, Tennessee, and what it’s already accomplished. And in future episodes, we’ll dive in even more to future projects within the park, developments between Volkswagen, which is the power behind the research park in UT, and what research parks mean in the future of scientific discovery, technologies, economies, and consumers.But I’m getting ahead of myself here, so let’s start from the beginning. I know you’re all dying to know, “Rickey, what exactly is a research park, anyway?” Well, I’m glad you asked. University research parks are the physical locations developed and designed to foster an environment of collaboration between universities, the public and private sectors, and the federal research laboratories. In the case of the UT Research Park, the goal is simple: to become a bridge between science and technology companies and the best up-and-coming scientific minds at the University of Tennessee.These are places established to enable a free flow of ideas between R&D institutes, universities, and research labs in order to solve real-world problems with innovation and cutting-edge solutions. And Volkswagen, the powerhouse German car manufacturer known for leading the industry in innovative developments, wanted to create one right here in little old Knoxville, Tennessee. But why? The answer to that question lies 112 miles south of Knoxville. In 2008, Chattanooga, Tennessee, came into focus when VW chose that scenic southern city as the location of its first U.S. auto plant since the closure of the Westmoreland Assembly Plant in Pennsylvania back in 1988. Now, the Volkswagen Chattanooga Assembly plant builds the US-specific VW Passat and the VW Atlas.With their own assembly plant located just over a hundred miles away, the well-established research-centric UT Knoxville at hand, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory just down the road, how could Knoxville not be the perfect location for researching composite materials?Of course, I say that as if it makes complete sense, but when I first began researching this podcast and reading about the UT Research Park, all I could think of is, why Knoxville and how did we get so lucky?But I had a conversation with my good friend of mine, Dr. Leon Tolbert, who works in the electrical engineering and computer science department at the University of Tennessee, and he gave me a little backstory that will put it all of this into perspective.Dr. Leon Tolbert: So, when Volkswagen first built their plant in Chattanooga, they came to the University of Tennessee—and that was probably more than 10 years ago—and wanted to engage the university because they were looking at hiring graduates of our university, they were looking at working with faculty, and they donated, I think, a pretty substantial sum of money at that time to fund research in engineering. And so, the College of Engineering then gave out grants to faculty who were doing work related to electric vehicles and, I believe, got a couple of those grants, and worked with students on things related to power electronics for electric vehicles. But then, I guess things just kind of coasted along there for a few years, and then, more recently, a couple of years ago, they approached again wanting deeper involvement, and came and looked at the work we were doing already related to electric vehicles, visited our department several times, and then approached us about establishing a Volkswagen fellowship for graduate students, and in that fellowship, they would hire the students to work full-time at Volkswagen while they were pursuing their PhD. And this kind of follows the model in Europe where a lot of the PhD students basically are full-time employees of companies, but they're pursuing a PhD, and they wanted to do something similar here at UT.Rickey McCallum: And they did just that. VW approached UT and created an incredible program for PhD students to work full time on research projects that directly impact real-world struggles. Now, when these students complete this program, they're going to be ready and have applicable real-world experience to show for all their hard work, and have a foundation of research already in place. So, Dr. Hendrik Mainka, project manager and team lead of UT’s Innovation Hub, told us a little bit more about the PhD program.Dr. Hendrik Mainka: Yeah, I think that the PhD program probably is pretty unique for the US. I mean, we have a PhD program in Germany at our headquarters where, always, the PhD students are Volkswagen employees. I think that's a huge one, too, a lot of the PhD fellows here and in the US, so PhD fellows you will talk to later, they are all Volkswagen employees, and we’re really working with them as our people to make sure we having this close connection, not only to the university, also for our students to really real-life problems, you know? You're working on a wireless power transfer, for example, that's something we want to see the next years being implemented in our cars. And so your PhD research really has a high impact. Same with the research on sizing to optimize our composite parts. That's really applied research on a PhD level, which really helps the company moving forward with the innovations, and also having the students working on real-life problems. I think that's really unique and hopefully, it's beneficial for both sides.Rickey McCallum: It all already sounds pretty great right? A world-renowned, industry-leading auto manufacturer choosing our Knoxville, Tennessee university to start exploring composite materials for more affordable, energy-efficient vehicles we can make right here in the same state.Yeah, it’s really awesome, and it gets better. VW didn’t just stop at the UT Research Park. In 2019 they announced that they wanted to use Knoxville as the site of their very first North American Innovation Hub. Now, in a partnership between Volkswagen, UT, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Innovation Hub will be an extension, or rather an expansion of the Research Park, and it will further develop research opportunities for UT doctoral students with a focus on electrical engineering and developing lighter components for composite materials.And those opportunities have already begun with the v...

Research Park Chronicles with Rickey McCallum explores the incredible innovation that’s taking place at the University of Tennessee Research Park. Find out why the research institute has become the gateway to collaboration between the University of Tennessee, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the private sector—helping unleash Knoxville’s entrepreneurial spirit while opening up amazing opportunities to organizations around the world.