About Us
Mission · Why now · Leadership · Governance
The Blackstone Valley is where American industry learned to work — fifty miles of mills from Worcester to Providence, and a city at the head of the river that built the machines everyone else used. WPI was founded there in 1865 on the idea that theory and practice belong in the same building.
Biology is now a manufacturing technology, and the same problem has returned: the science is ready and the infrastructure is not. The BioHub is shared pilot-scale capacity at Gateway Park, so a company with a working process can scale it here.
Same river. Same ethos. New century.
Mission
InfrastructureInnovationWorkforce
The BioHub gives companies in Central Massachusetts shared access to the equipment, process development, and trained people to run fermentation at pilot scale — so bioindustrial products invented at the bench can be made here, and bioindustrial companies can start and grow here.
A Central Massachusetts where a bioindustrial company never has to leave to scale.
The U.S. Department of War has named biomanufacturing one of its six Critical Technology Areas. McKinsey Global Institute has estimated that biological innovation in materials, chemicals, and energy could generate $200–300 billion in direct economic impact per year by 2030–40. The infrastructure that will scale this industry is being built right now — and the regions that build it first will lead it.
The BioHub is anchored at WPI's Gateway Park in Worcester — the heart of the Commonwealth and one of New England's fastest-growing cities. In 2022 CBRE ranked Worcester 15th in the country for life-sciences research talent, citing "some of the strongest concentrations of various life sciences researchers in the US." The region's industrial heritage along the Blackstone River — birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution — has given way to a modern innovation economy led by healthcare, education, and the biosciences.
We build on top of WPI's Biomanufacturing Education and Training Center (BETC), which trained more than 3,000 biomanufacturing professionals in its first 11 years, and WPI's Cell Engineering Research Equipment Suite (CERES), an established research facility serving a multi-year base of WPI faculty and partner companies.
MBI's Regional Biomanufacturing Strategy defined the gaps the BioHub is built to close. New pilot and process-development infrastructure comes online over the next three years.
The BioHub launched with a $5.2 million investment from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, with cost-share from WPI, MBI, and corporate partners. WPI is also part of one of five NSF BioFoundries in the country, providing complementary federal support for strain-engineering infrastructure at the BioHub.
Startups, scaling companies, equipment developers, academic labs, nonprofits, and the people they hire.
Book time on CERES today, and on pilot infrastructure as it opens. Sponsor a project, run joint R&D, send staff to our training programs, or come to an event and meet the rest of the regional community.
Leadership
Jon Weaver
Regional Innovation Officer
President & CEO, Massachusetts Biomedical Initiatives
Dr. Liaohai Chen
Co-Principal Investigator
Director, WPI Biomanufacturing Education and Training Center (BETC)
Governance
The BioHub is governed by a Governing Board made up of WPI, MBI, MassTech, and stakeholders, supported by an Advisory Group providing strategic and technical guidance from across industry, academia, and government.