The land that used to be Mississippi State University’s 26-acre dairy farm now has more industry than university employees — and that is the goal, said Marc McGee, director of the Research and Technology Corporation.
McGee presented a summary of the Thad Cochran Research, Technology and Economic Development Park, the first and largest research park in Mississippi, to the Columbus Rotary Club during its Tuesday meeting at Lion Hills Golf Club. MSU converted it to a park in 1984 with funding from Oktibbeha County and the city of Starkville, and it was named after U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran in 2004.
MSU spends $241 million per year on research development and contributes to more than half of the research done at all public universities in the state.
“They’re all public universities, everybody in this room owns these universities, so at the end of the day, it’s about Mississippi and what we do for the people of Mississippi,” McGee said.
Collaboration is key to producing research of this magnitude, said Jim Martin, MSU associate vice president for economic development and corporate engagement.
“A lot of our research crosses multiple disciplines, so we engage with corporations and we engage with our customers to find out what problems they need help solving,” Martin said.
One field the university is exploring is driverless vehicles, which McGee said can be sent into war zones and other places unsafe for people. MSU is developing an off-road testing site at the research park through the Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems.
The park includes condos and a cafe in addition to labs and offices.
“We have a concept of live and work (at the research park) and then you go across Highway 182 and you play on campus,” McGee said.
The park is also home to the fourth-fastest supercomputer at an academic university in the country, capable of more than 5 quadrillion calculations per second. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has one of its three data centers at MSU for this reason, McGee said.
Since 2009, the park has always had a new building either in the planning stages or under construction, McGee said. The Research and Technology Corporation bought the Cadence Bank building in downtown Starkville in May, and the software company Babel Street occupies the third floor. More companies will move into the first two floors after Cadence moves into its new building on Russell Street in a couple years, McGee said.
The park has five buildings in Starkville and two on the Gulf Coast, including the John C. Stennis Space Center, which is built to withstand a Category 3 hurricane, McGee said.
The Research and Technology Corporation hopes to continue bringing jobs into the park and is already looking as far ahead as 2025, he said.
“We want to keep students here when they graduate, but we also want to give students a real-world application while they’re in school, so we’ll give them the opportunity to be able to go into a company and get some hands-on, real-life experience,” McGee told The Dispatch.
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