UEL: The Innovation Hub Powering Minnesota’s Startup Future

By Sam Shuster, Executive Director of UEL

UEL is a 150,000 sq ft independent, mission-driven nonprofit incubator that is currently home to 60+ resident companies across biotech, medtech, agtech, and cleantech. UEL resident companies are working on solutions to some of our toughest challenges including eliminating PFAS from our environment, developing better biofuels, improving crop yield to help feed our planet, and cures to diseases that today are incurable.

UEL occupies a unique role in Minnesota’s science and technology community by providing specialized, sophisticated lab space that would otherwise be cost-prohibitive for startups to build on their own. UEL businesses are lab-based and need the type of space we provide to launch and grow. Without availability of the space we provide, local lab-based businesses may either need to postpone their launch or move out of the region. Strategically positioned in St. Paul on an 11-acre site between the University of Minnesota’s Minneapolis and St. Paul campuses, UEL is deeply embedded in the region’s translation of discovery to commercialization. Its location is critical to its success, and securing the property was made possible through the support and advocacy from the City of St. Paul and the St. Paul Port Authority.

For 20 years, UEL has served as a technology commercialization hub for early-stage startups, a place to inspire and engage the next generation of entrepreneurs to build and stay local, and a community resource hosting seminars, industry groups, co-working communities, economic development groups, and international delegations. 

Over its two decades of operation, UEL has been home to 170 resident companies. Those companies have raised over $1.4 billion in capital, created approximately 2,000 jobs, and been granted over 1,500 patents. Along the way, both UEL and its resident companies have supported, inspired, and hosted thousands of students.

UEL’s building has been full for five years, and the need for the space and resources it provides is growing. Without additional space, companies will look to other communities to build their businesses. To accommodate more companies and meet the needs of the local market, UEL is looking to raise capital to convert several underutilized spaces in its building to help launch more start-ups, and to build out a training lab to prepare students for work in lab-based businesses.

UEL In the News
The Minnesota Star Tribune, April 2026: The quiet hero behind some local biotech breakthroughs is about to get loud