Pictured Above: Our partners at Tryba Architects have imagined the view of our future, expanded campus with a view from RTD Light Rail showing cultural, residential, and commercial innovation within the campus.

By: Fitzsimons Innovation Community

As Fitzsimons Innovation Community celebrates the 25th anniversary, President and CEO Kelly Brough reflects on a remarkable journey of transformation—and an even more ambitious vision for the future. What began as a bioscience incubation campus has evolved into something unprecedented: a thriving ecosystem where researchers, practitioners, educators, and innovators collaborate to bring life-changing healthcare solutions directly to patients.

The Power of Proximity
“What we really focus on at Fitzsimons Innovation Community is how do we bring life-changing innovation to healthcare that impacts people’s lives immediately,” Brough explains. “This mission drives everything from the community’s physical design to its collaborative culture.”

This campus is about more than just co-location—it’s the second largest economic driver in Colorado after Denver International Airport, housing around 80 companies alongside nationally ranked hospitals, medical schools, and research facilities. This proximity creates something rare in the healthcare innovation world: seamless, organic collaboration between academia and industry.”

“We’re one of the few places in the world that has all of those assets in one place with real intention of helping people work together,” Brough notes. “The result is a Community where a hospital practitioner can walk next door to discuss a research challenge, where clinical trials happen steps away from where they can be implemented into real-world healthcare, and where ideas move from concept to patient impact with unprecedented speed.”

A New Vision Takes Shape
Fitzsimons Innovation Community’s 25th anniversary is more than a celebration—it hints at a dramatic transformation ahead. Just this week, Aurora’s planning commission approved the new Fitzsimons Innovation Community Master Plan that will continue the growth trajectory of the campus into something that continuously improves. We look forward to a vibrant, mixed-use community home to more than 7,000 residential units alongside continued development of additional research and laboratory space, with added retail, entertainment, and dining options that round out the live-work-play model.

The new vision creates a downtown-style urban environment where innovators can live, work, research, and collaborate within a single community devoted to advancing healthcare. The centerpiece of this transformation focuses on Scranton Boulevard, envisioned as a beautiful corridor surrounded by labs, housing, retail, and restaurants—all designed to foster the kind of spontaneous interactions that spark breakthrough innovations.

One of the unique strengths of this Community lies in its ability to support companies through every stage of growth. Researchers start with shared lab space and benches when costs must be minimal, then graduate to larger, specialized facilities as their innovations mature and attract investment. A great example of this is Alta Biotech, a company who started small in Bioscience 1. When the time came for them to expand, they were able to quickly relocate into Bioscience 2, taking advantage of a larger space with more of the amenities they needed as they scaled. In the past, they would have had to leave the campus to have their needs met, but starting small on the Fitzsimons Innovation Community campus allowed them to adapt and move quickly with minimal interruption to business and zero change to their employees’ commutes and routines.

“It is really cool how we grow with these organizations and how prepared we are to help them transition from having the inexpensive start-up space to having that specialized, custom space that meets their needs,” Brough says. “This scalable approach ensures that breakthrough innovations can develop entirely within the community, from initial concept through commercial success.”

The Community’s Board of Directors structure amplifies this support system. With leaders from University Hospital, Children’s Hospital, and the University of Colorado system serving as members, every board meeting becomes an opportunity for connection. Brough has implemented an initiative where Community companies present their research at board meetings creating the perfect environment for the immediate collaborations that often emerge. It’s a right-place-right-time collaboration that happens here all the time.

Breaking Down Silos Through Strategic Connection

While the technical complexity of healthcare research can create natural silos, Fitzsimons has developed innovative approaches to cross-pollination. Shared challenges like financing bring researchers together through programs like the CU Innovations Fund. Governance structures ensure hospital leaders and academic administrators stay connected to emerging innovations.

Perhaps most importantly, the community leverages its extensive networks to bridge the gap between research and market impact. Brough recently helped a startup connect with four priority healthcare systems, leading to the company’s decision to remain in Colorado after acquisition.

“There’s a big transition from an idea and clinical trials to taking something to market that can help patients directly—being introduced to systems that are already in place, and being able to make important connections streamlines that process.” she explains.

Looking Forward: The Next 25 Years

As Fitzsimons prepares for its next chapter, the focus extends to even international innovators. In healthcare, a global perspective is important because when you’re talking about advancements in treatment for disease, the breakthroughs benefit everyone. “It is always valuable for us to have more and more people here doing the work and making the discoveries because as the Community grows, the opportunities for collaboration do, too.” Brough explains. “Every single new idea and new innovation we bring in is an asset for everybody who’s already here.”

The Community is also exploring anchor tenant opportunities—larger, established companies that can provide stability while elevating the entire ecosystem’s profile. The goal isn’t just growth, but ensuring Fitzsimons transforms from Colorado’s “best kept secret” into a globally recognized hub for healthcare innovation.

A Future Devoted to Innovation
What makes Fitzsimons Innovation Community truly unique extends beyond its research capabilities or collaborative culture. It is a community where professionals can choose to be practitioners, researchers, teachers, learners, or residents—or, as is many times the case, all of the above.

“This is a campus that devotes itself to health, your health,” Brough concludes. “In an era when healthcare innovation often feels disconnected from human impact, we offer something different: a place where the future of medicine is being built by people who understand that every breakthrough must ultimately serve the fundamental goal of improving human health and saving lives.

As the community embarks on its next 25 years, that mission remains unchanged—even as the methods, scale, and ambition continue to evolve. The future of healthcare innovation is being written in Colorado right here at Fitzsimons Innovation Community, one collaboration at a time.