Featured

At Fitzsimons Innovation Community, we get extremely excited when new organizations put down roots on our campus. But sometimes, these new Community members aren’t really new at all. We can explain. A couple months ago here on the blog, we talked about CU Innovations, and how it provides a path to commercialization for the breakthrough work coming out of the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. In essence, it’s a way for new discoveries happening through the course of research and training to evolve into new organizations and make their way to market. RefinedScience, a high-tech biosciences company that uses unique access to and analysis of specialized data to inform drug development and discovery, is the newest Community member on the Fitzsimons campus and a perfect example of a CU Innovations success story.

For the past 15 years, Elyse Blazevich has been innovating and creating new pathways in life sciences discovery in Colorado, most recently as President and CEO of the Colorado BioScience Association (CBSA) and President of the Colorado BioScience Institute. An important Fitzsimons Innovation Community partner from their beginning, CBSA advances Colorado’s life sciences ecosystem by building a collaborative, pro-innovation business environment. CBSA expands access to capital, offers education and networking opportunities for their members, and advocates for life sciences companies by creating strong partnerships with policymakers and business leaders. One of the many ways they provide these opportunities is through the Rocky Mountain Life Sciences Investor & Partnering Conference, an event Fitzsimons Innovation Community is always honored to sponsor.

If you ask the Economic Development team for Adams County Government what drives them, they’ll tell you it’s their goal of being the most inclusive and innovative county in America. Fitzsimons Innovation Community is proud to call Adams County home, and our recent conversation with the leaders of the Adams County Government office only reinforced that pride. We spoke this month with Lucas Workman, Economic Development Manager, and Caroline Joy, Community and Economic Development Marketing Lead about the goals and visions the Adams County Government has for one of the fastest growing and most popular counties in Colorado. What we found out is that Adams County is the perfect blend of urban and rural amenities, affordability, and quality of life, and that the economic development of the county is in very capable hands.

In creating the plan for a 184-acre innovation campus, Fitzsimons Innovation Community leadership always knew there would be room for change and adaptability down the road. Over a 20-year period, technology and policies change, new information comes to light, and we gain a better understanding of what our Community members need to succeed. Focused on the ‘whole person,’ the update of our Master Plan seeks to build out the Community core in a way that supports research, learning, and living. Today, we have facilities, infrastructure, and wrap-around services for 25,000 researchers, faculty, and staff, along with 4,500 future health professionals. As the campus continues to grow, we will also evolve into a fully integrated, live-work-play-learn environment emphasizing personal health and wellbeing for every individual on campus, with access to the resources needed for groundbreaking life sciences research and transformative healthcare.

Fitzsimons Innovation Community is proud to present a new resource for life sciences companies who are considering relocation to or development on our campus. Our newly released eBook, entitled Bringing Life Sciences Innovators Home to Colorado, is an invaluable tool for founders, executives, and site selectors from companies of all sizes, and it showcases how and why Fitzsimons Innovation Community has become a Colorado destination for life sciences acceleration, disruption, and success.

If you spend much time on the Fitzsimons Innovation Community campus, at some point you’re likely to see someone pushing a rolling cart full of lab supplies across Montview Boulevard to the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. It happens a few times a day, and that cart and employee come from LIGHT LABS, a distributor, supplier, and occasional manufacturer of lab supplies located in the Bioscience 1 building. LIGHT LABS is celebrating ten years of running their operations at Fitzsimons Innovation Community, and we got a chance to talk to Cary Gummelt, LIGHT LABS founder, president, and CEO about how they got their start and how they found their niche here on our campus.

The first time April Giles, Vice President of Business Development for Fitzsimons Innovation Community, spent real time on the University of Colorado School of Medicine campus she was in elementary school. At the time, her mom was one of three women in her medical school class and the only student in the program who had young children. Giles and her sister would often spend time in the halls of the university doing homework or exploring while their mom was in class or clinic. When we talked with Giles about Women’s History Month and how she is shaping leadership and strategy at Fitzsimons Innovation Community, she was quick to bring up that her mom had set an early example of what it looks like for women to push boundaries, break barriers, and pursue their dreams.

If it has to do with health and innovation in Colorado, Fitzsimons Innovation Community is bound to be a part of it. We are especially proud to be an Innovator Partner in our state’s life sciences ecosystem campaign: Colorado Hub for Health Impact. This campaign brings together more than 20 Colorado organizations to promote the benefits of working, living, and discovering in Colorado to a national audience. The campaign is spreading the word about how our excellent infrastructure, lab and manufacturing space, and outstanding academic and research institutions make the perfect home for life sciences companies of all sizes.

At Fitzsimons Innovation Community, we know January is one of the best times to look forward, set goals, and make plans for the year ahead. But it’s also a great time to reflect on the successes of the prior year, and our newly released 2023 Fitzsimons Innovation Community Innovation Report is our favorite way to do that.