A newly formed nonprofit is vying to make Cleveland the command center for a project that would involve biomedical research on the International Space Station.
The project would center on research in a microgravity environment, according to Jay Foran, senior vice president with Team NEO, a Northeast Ohio-based business attraction group. The research could be applied to the fields of life sciences, advanced energy, agriculture and the environment.
NASA is outsourcing the project and will ultimately make the call on who is awarded the project. It’s unclear how many cities are competing with Cleveland for the project. A NASA spokesman would say only that the project “is still in the competitive phase.”
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The nonprofit behind the Cleveland bid is called Space Laboratories Associates (SLA). It was formed by research and development group Battelle in Columbus and the Universities Space Research Association, a group of more than 100 universities.
SLA chose to locate its proposed command center in Cleveland because of its “proximity to significant organizations in the life sciences,” such as Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals Case Medical Center and Case Western Reserve University. The command center would be located in the city’s burgeoning Health-Tech Corridor on the east side, Foran said.
The new nonprofit also considered locations in North Carolina, Texas, Florida and Washington, D.C., according to Team NEO.
“That doesn’t mean we’ve won anything, yet,” Foran said. “We’ve just won the hearts of Space Lab Associates.”
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If SLA is awarded the 10-year deal, it would manage the research and education portfolio for the International Space Station, as well as research conducted on the space station by other federal agencies.
Biotechnology research in space focuses on protein crystal growth — growing organic crystals with thousands of atoms — and on cell and tissue culturing — the study of how cells interact in a low-gravity environment, according to NASA.
The project would initially create 32 jobs in the area, but Team NEO hopes it would lead to more in subsequent years. “As companies start to cluster around this location, there would be new companies brought into the area and new jobs created,” Foran said.
It’s unclear when NASA will announce the decision on who wins the project, but Foran said he expects that a decision is “imminent.”
