Unparalleled STEM Education Opportunities: MBiC will provide students throughout Minnesota with expanded educational opportunities unique in the United States.
The new building will include education spaces specifically designed to offer a unique STEM experience for students of all ages, fully leveraging and extending existing programs with Riverland Community College, University of Minnesota Rochester, Austin Public Schools, and other local schools and state universities.
There will also be training opportunities for professionals to develop a cryo-EM biomedical workforce, for which there is a high emerging national demand.
Accelerated Research Progress: Cryo-EM and Cryo-ET are the premier methods for macromolecular structure determination for a broad range of targets thanks to rapid advances in instrumentation and data analysis capabilities, sample production, and biochemical characterization.
The last several years have seen a rapid growth in the available uses of this technology that can support breakthroughs across a wide range of areas, including biology, medicine, agriculture, ecology, and industry. But despite this progress, high costs, limited access, and limited training options create significant roadblocks that prevent the widespread use of state-of-the-art Cryo-EM and Cryo-ET methods.
MBiC will directly address each of these roadblocks to keep Minnesota at the forefront of research and accelerate discoveries in the state and throughout the Midwest.
MBiC will leverage previous state investments that doubled the size of The Hormel Institute and The Hormel Foundation’s investment which brought in the seventh cryo-EM Titan Krios instrument in the United States. Thanks to recent Congressional funding and support from MN Senators Klobuchar and Smith, the HI will soon install the Arctis Cryo Focused Ion Beam (CryoFIB) — which will be the first installed in North America.
Community and Economic Benefits: MBiC will create more diverse employment options in rural Minnesota, and generate more economic activity in the area and for the state, with an estimated regional business and industry economic output of more than $8 million during Phase I. An increase in visitors to The HI will also lead to increased business for various local sectors, including retail, hospitality, and more.
Beyond the Austin area, MBiC will help The HI to support the development of the next generation of Minnesota-raised innovators, who will go on to change the world for the better in myriad ways.