Bioversity, a leading Massachusetts nonprofit provider of biotech workforce training, joined with UMass Lowell officials Thursday to announce a new life sciences workforce training partnership that includes the opening of a dedicated training lab and classroom facility on the UMass Lowell campus and the 2025 launch of a new workforce training program.

Through this partnership — the latest addition to the Lowell Innovation Network Corridor (LINC) — Bioversity and UMass Lowell will provide comprehensive training and career pathways to residents of Greater Lowell and the Merrimack Valley who are looking to start a new career in the life sciences industry, with an emphasis on supporting underrepresented and low-income residents.

“Bioversity’s mission is to blaze training pathways and create employer connections for underrepresented populations and individuals traditionally left out of the life sciences, quickly propelling them into well-paying jobs and lifelong careers,” said Zach Stanley, executive director of Bioversity. “As we seek to expand our impact regionally, Lowell was an obvious candidate with a ready-to-work talent pool and a density of employers looking to hire. Our partnership with UMass Lowell promises we can launch quickly and impactfully.”

Bioversity, which spun out of MassBio in 2023, opened its first training center in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston in January 2024. Since then, it has trained four cohorts of students in its Biotech Career Foundations certificate program. By the end of this year, Bioversity will have graduated 65 students making it the largest life sciences certificate training program in Massachusetts.

“This partnership is an opportunity to merge UMass Lowell’s research and faculty expertise in the life sciences sector with the needs of the city, employers, and the residents of Lowell and the Merrimack Valley,” said UMass Lowell Chancellor Julie Chen. “We’re proud to partner with Bioversity and with Middlesex Community College and Northern Essex Community College to create a powerful pathway for local residents to access high-quality, well-paying jobs in the biotech sector. Workforce is a key piece of the LINC vision, as we recruit additional life sciences firms and jobs to Lowell and the region.”
Chancellor Chen extended a warm thank you to the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center for their generous workforce development capital grant as well as the City of Lowell for their investment in and commitment to the Bioversity initiative. She thanked City Manager Tom Golden and credited him for being helping make all of the University’s positive momentum possible in Lowell. She cited him as her “partner at every meeting” with this initiative and with the LINC development.

For his part, Golden honed in on statistics cited regarding the impressive number of opportunities Bioversity has created for diverse communities in Dorchester, and told them “to prepare for second place because Lowell was going to do even better.”

Announced in March, LINC is a new commercial real estate development that will translate the university’s success into economic development gains for Lowell and the Merrimack Valley. Across UMass Lowell’s campus and in the City of Lowell, LINC is a public-private partnership leading to over a million square feet of new laboratories and office space as well as housing, restaurants, retail and entertainment venues.

This fall, Bioversity and UMass Lowell will be actively recruiting potential students for its free, stipend-supported training cohort that will launch in February 2025. Prospective Bioversity students must be eager to pursue a new career in the life sciences, but a science background is not necessary or required. Applicants must be at least 18, have a high school diploma, be eligible to work in the United States, and demonstrate dependability and professionalism.

Bioversity’s Biotech Career Foundations course in Lowell will run Monday through Thursday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. for eight weeks in the Wannalancit Mills building on the UMass Lowell campus. The program will offer students not only training at a state-of-the-art facility, but access to a range of expertise from UMass Lowell faculty and leaders of life sciences start-up companies as well as biomanufacturing facilities.

After graduation, Bioversity assists students with job placement in early career scientific operations roles such as lab operations through its network of employer partners. Bioversity plans to run a second eight-week training cohort during the fall of 2025.

Community members interested in learning more about the program and enrollment opportunities are encouraged to visit the Bioversity website.

“In just a few short months, Bioversity is already having an impact on the Boston community, and we are thrilled to begin to replicate these results in the Merrimack Valley starting next year,” said Kendalle Burlin O’Connell, CEO and president of MassBio and chair of the Bioversity Board of Directors. “When you think about where the life sciences industry will be growing in the coming years, it is not just in the traditional places like Cambridge and Boston, but in our Gateway Cities — like Lowell, Haverhill, and Lawrence — that have so much to offer. That’s where the success we’ve seen in Dorchester through Bioversity will be felt next.”

“The partnership between UMass Lowell and Bioversity to launch a new life sciences workforce training program is exactly the type of collaboration we envisioned being a part of the LINC project as it promises to transform Lowell and the region into a top destination for business,” said UMass President Marty Meehan. “We are very proud of the partnership between Bioversity and UMass Lowell, which will expand access to educational, training and career opportunities in one of the state’s fastest-growing sectors to even more Massachusetts residents.”