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For our first stop of our 3rd day we stopped by the innovation campus at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln to explore the rest of the campus. We started our tour with a brief history of the campus, which is surprisingly not owned by the university. The campus was originally the site of the Nebraska State Fair, from 1901-2009 , but moved due to age and the location not being central enough. The campus is considered a research park, where public and private industry meets providing partnerships with around 70 companies. The Innovation campus was also the site of our food science tour the day before, If you’d like to check that blog.
The Innovation campus has been open for 11 years, but for the last 10 has been providing a makers studio, for use by students or the general public. Many classes are taught using the space, but the general public or students can use it individually for personal projects, or shops they run, such as furniture making, embroidery, or 3D printing. However the classes such as architecture and fashion design use the space to practice the hands on applications. The space operates on a monthly membership program, where they can only go for the duration of their project if they wish. All areas offer optional training, however for some, such as wood working, or metal working, mandatory training is needed to use the space. We explored the area, looking at all the machinery, and past projects, such as those for sale by a free membership veteran program that sells their goods allowing the money to go back to the veterans. They had a beautiful assortment of pens and even a few wands designed after Harry Potter on display. Places such as the ceramics and clay or jewelry making rooms in particular take advantage of the program where a trained experienced member can offer a class to the community using the universities space. While the university provides all tools, members are responsible for their materials, allowing them to achieve what they wish.
We then left to go explore the greenhouse system, unlike anything most of us have seen before. The greenhouse operates on a conveyor belt system, collecting photographs and data in a variety of ways, allowing them to keep constantly up to date data, and perform specialized experiments. The Lemna Tec system also has a smaller more mobile space available for when they don’t want to have to operate the whole large scale system. The university is preparing to partner with the USDA for a secondary greenhouse in the near future. Most research done is on Nebraska native plants.
We also, lastly, visited The Combine, an Ag and Food tech incubator for early and high growth startups. This program has assisted 50+ startups since 2019. The program is a collaboration between the university, and the Invest in Nebraska non-profit. This teaches entrepreneurs how to build a business, provides support, connections, a designated work space, insight from established producers in Nebraska, producer to customer research assistance, and even help raising funds. It’s a state wide program, offering at home and in person help, allowing also small international companies help in establishing themselves in Nebraska. This helps to build the state’s economy, and also provides internship and job opportunities to the university students through these producer sponsorships, providing benefits to the company and university.
We met representatives from three developing startups, the first being from Blue Stem. The purpose of their business, being to chemically convert corn through fermentation, a project they’ve been developing over the last 3 years. There is no change in the quality of their product versus common current alternatives, however its more sustainable with 70% less admissions. The current project is diaper fillings. Corn is highly produced in Nebraska, commonly turned into Ethanol, and Blue Stem is trying to use a small portion of that. Marble technologies is producing an intelligent automation process for the beef industry, through the AI sorting of beef in hopes of improving efficiency. The company noticed the issues with the supply lines after covid, and has since worked on building solutions. The final startup, ALA engineering, is working to create autonomous cattle feed trucks, designed for large feed lots to reduce labor, and increase hours of operation. This process involves premapping the area, using lydar, allowing them to operate in any weather. We finished our tour by walking back around to view the outside of the campus.
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