CEED Building being revamped

Jun. 2—The CEED Building on University of Texas Permian Basin's Midland campus is undergoing an extensive revamp that should be ready to open by early next year.

Headed by Brian Shedd, UTPB's Executive Director of the Office of Innovation & Commercialization, the campus will be housed in the 30,000-square-foot center. The approximately $8 million in upgrades will develop spaces to support innovation and entrepreneurship. He conducted a media tour Thursday.

Once completed, CEED will contain office space, coworking space, a wet lab, a makerspace, conference/event space and a cafe.

The purpose of the revamp is to promote innovation and commercialization, Shedd said. UTPB created the Office of Innovation & Commercialization about a year ago to try and integrate innovation and commercialization activities at all levels of the university from entrepreneurship and industry collaboration to technology transfer, start-up support and product development, Shedd said.

He added that they are going to be very community focused.

"The goal is really to try and bring people in, get them engaged with the university, create opportunities for different companies and external investors and entrepreneurs to develop relationships with faculty to hire students. Internships is going to be a big focus, so we're really excited about the idea of companies being able to come in with just one or two people, but then to be able to bring students in to assist them with their development goals," Shedd said.

He added that the SBDC is there, which is very community facing.

"I think the other great thing is just the type of resources that we're going to have are not available really anywhere else in town ...," Shedd said.

He said he thinks they will be collaborating quite a bit with the Fab Lab at Odessa College.

Shedd added that they will also provide a "soft landing" for companies that are moving to the area.

"They can come and occupy some of the private offices as temporary office space until they find a more permanent home. We're really looking at engaging the community, not just from an individual perspective, but small business and start-up all the way up to medium and large businesses as well," he said.

The first floor of the Dunagan Library on the main campus is also being updated with innovation and commercialization in mind.

"The Blackstone Launchpad, which is the student entrepreneurship group on campus, is going to be located at the library. My office has a lot of connections with that group, so what we hope is that the library will be where students get introduced to innovation and commercialization topics; and as they progress with their business goals, they can then move over here to the CEED building," Shedd said.

The Office of Innovation & Commercialization, is located in the same space as the Small Business Development Center and two engineering research labs, the Texas Water and Energy Institute and Advanced Manufacturing Center.

Shedd said the Advanced Manufacturing area is going to have a lot of connections with the makerspace.

"We're thinking about having smaller desktop versions of equipment here at the makerspace, which the Advanced Manufacturing Center will have larger, more sophisticated versions of in their space. As companies come in and learn about prototyping and manufacturing in the makerspace, they can graduate and go on to do more sophisticated product development in the Advanced Manufacturing Center," Shedd said.

The Small Business Development Center is getting a refresh to their office suites. They will be located in the front of the building, which Shedd said is great because they are a very high volume piece of the business incubation activities at CEED.

"We also have a number of event and conference rooms that will be available featuring our 90-person auditorium. We have a fishbowl that sits about 30 or 40 and can be reconfigured to do different kinds of workshops and we have a 20-person conference room," he said.

CEED updates

There will be four main areas developed with the renovations — the innovation corridor, which will run through the center of the building and includes about 7,000 square feet. It will contain an office suite housing the Office of Innovation & Commercialization and several tenant companies, the web lab, the coworking suite, the makerspace and an MBA executive classroom to be used by the College of Business for student entrepreneurs enrolled in the College of Business who are also launching new ventures that will be located in CEED.

The second area is the conference and event space where all the pitch competitions and start-up accelerator programs will be held. The conference and event spaces will include a 90-person auditorium designed to be used for larger presentations and competitions such as the Midland Development Corporation's Midland Entrepreneurial Challenge.

It will also include an event space that seats 40 and can be reconfigured into breakout meeting rooms or for large training sessions; an atrium that can be configured to seat about 50 people and will be used for social networking events; and an MBA executive classroom that will offer training and education space outfitted with audio/video presentation capability.

All the spaces will be accessible to the community to hold events that "overlap with the innovative and entrepreneurial vision for the CEED," a news release said.

The third area is the SBDC offices, which are being moved to the front of the building to provide seamless support for small businesses and connectivity with other programs at OIC and resources within the CEED. The release said the SBDC is one of the most active in the state and consults with more than 4,000 businesses a year.

The fourth area includes two labs at the back of the building for the College of Engineering. The labs are the Texas Water and Energy Institute, which is conducting research on produced water derived from fracking and other oil production activities in the Permian Basin, and the Advanced Manufacturing Center, which will house sophisticated manufacturing and characterization equipment to support UTPB research and industry collaborations.