Purdue to build new facility

WEST LAFAYETTE -- Purdue University is building a $7 million center at its high-tech research park aimed at capitalizing on scientific discoveries made there.\nSchool officials broke ground Monday on the Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship -- a 31,000-square-foot building that will eventually be linked by overhead walkways to Purdue's $100 million Discovery Park.\nIt will include a 72-seat lecture room, conference rooms and several rooms for use by the research park's occupants.\nPurdue President Martin Jischke said the new center "will create opportunities to educate students, faculty and staff in ways to bring research to the marketplace."\n"The center will add an important new dimension to our many initiatives in entrepreneurism and will strengthen the link between Purdue and Indiana's economy," he said.\nConstruction is set to begin before the end of the year. When complete, the center will house a group of researchers studying ways to help faculty members tackle the complexities of licensing and marketing new technologies and products.\nAnother laboratory will pair engineering and management graduate students on projects to help them understand how research fits in with social and commercial needs.\nThe entrepreneurial center is one of four major centers planned for Purdue's Discovery Park. The park will eventually house bioscience engineering labs and a center for researchers and students in electrical engineering, computer science, biology, economics and other fields.\nIt also will be the site of a center devoted to the study of nanotechnology, the science of using single atoms and molecules to create tiny machines and devices.\nBurton Morgan, a 1938 Purdue University graduate who launched about 50 companies during his career, said he was excited that the new center was on its way to becoming a reality.\n"Purdue engineers have a proud history of entrepreneurial success," said Morgan, a Hudson, Ohio, resident. "The new center will take that success to a new level."\nMorgan, who received his Purdue degree in mechanical engineering, is helping fund the new center through donations from his foundation. He has also created an endowment for Purdue's Krannert School of Business now valued at more than $4.1 million.