BioKansas to promote regional life sciences with first big event

The life sciences non-profit has plans to host its first Innovation Festival in summer 2022. In collaboration with other regional organizations, the festival is part of a collaborative effort to promote the area as a regional biologics hub.

The summer of 2022 will be an eventful season for life sciences in the Kansas City region. Along with the commissioning completion of the $1.25 billion National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility in Manhattan in mid-year, another significant move for regional life sciences will be BioKansas’ first-ever Innovation Festival.

This week, the bioscience non-profit announced that it would hold its first Innovation Festival, a planned annual series of events, from Aug. 4-6 at Crown Center in Kansas City. The festival is being designed to attract local and out of town audiences, highlighting the Kansas City region as a vibrant and welcoming area to live, work, and grow business, especially in the growing life-sciences sector.

“This has been a long-awaited vision for our organization,” said Sonia Hall, BioKansas CEO. “We want to shake things up and really draw attention to our exciting innovation ecosystem and everything it will bring to our region.”

The goal, Hall said, is to create a collaborative effort to build a regional biologics hub. It is working in partnership with KC Rising, a regional economic development community organization, to organize the festival and showcase various innovative efforts across the Midwest. The event, BioKansas said, will support economic development, personal development, and investment opportunities in the region and will help recruit early career scientists to work or train in the region.

But beyond the business and research component, it will promote the region’s quality-of-life attributes by emphasizing the roles that music and visual arts play in communicating and learning science.