Many local companies have found their scientific and economic footing via the biotech incubator program at Stony Brook University. But the incubator program isn’t directed exclusively at Long Island companies. Ginny Llobell, assistant and acting director of the Center for Biotechnology in the late 1980s, describes the Center’s second tenant, “Olympus Biomedical, which was a Japanese company that was breaking into biotechnology.” This was a turning point for the Center, in retrospect. Logistically “it was a big challenge. I really feel like that got the incubator really off the ground and running because I had to figure out with them how to get telephones [working], how to get access to everything at the university, how to get liquid nitrogen brought in, all this stuff… The legal department and the Stony Brook Foundation, everybody had to get involved in every discussion about everything. That was challenging and it was really rewarding. Once we got the Olympus company in there, I felt like now we’re really off and running.”
