IIN drives integrated research, innovation

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — Strength in collaboration is the foundation for the Illinois Innovation Network, linking 15 hubs throughout the state that drive research in agriculture and other areas.

IIN is a system of connected university, community and industry-based hubs working together to drive innovation along with economic and workforce development.

“The idea is to drive economic development through university-based innovation. It’s trying to build research relationships, but also community engagement relationships,” said IIN Chair Chris Merrett, Western Illinois University director of the Illinois Institute of Rural Affairs.

“There are funding opportunities for faculty, but what I like about this is the funding opportunities that are offered to the university faculty require that a faculty from one university has to work with another IIN partner and also a community member such as a community organization.

“The idea is that we’re building relationships, research relationships across the state and also strengthening the economic development role that universities have with their partner communities.”

IIN, launched in August 2018, initially included three hubs located at each of the University of Illinois campuses, along with the Discovery Partners Institute in Chicago.

The network has since expanded to encompass all 12 public universities in Illinois, aiming to foster collaboration among universities, communities and industries to drive innovation and economic development.

Funding Opportunities

Sustaining Illinois Seed Funding is among the IIN programs and awarded nearly $240,000 in seed grants to six research teams in 2025.

The research projects ranged from a multimodal deep learning approach for enhanced lignin and plastic deconstruction to exploring to exploring the potential of an extremophilic alga for thriving and biofuel production in a microplastic-impacted environment.

Dozens of funding opportunities available this year include areas such as strengthening agricultural systems, value-added producer grant, strategic economic and community development program, and Agriculture and Food Research Initiative.

ISA Partnership

IIN is a co-sponsor to Illinois Soybean Association’s SpringBoard Seed Funding Challenge, an initiative that kicked off last year through ISA’s Soy Innovation Center.

The challenge is designed to find new uses for soy by identifying and supporting early-stage innovations in soy-based, non-food applications.

IIN was highlighted during this year’s SpringBoard Challenge hosted by ISA as part of a panel discussion themed “Strength Through Collaboration: Universities as the Crucible of Innovation.” Merrett served as moderator.

Panelists were Doug Cruitt, Distillery Labs executive director; Kim Kidwell, U of I associate chancellor for strategic partnership and initiatives and IIN liaison; and Gary Kinsel, Southern Illinois University Carbondale research and innovation strategist.

Kinsel touted the advantages IIN provides by noting the hurdles that would need to be overcome without the program.

Prior to IIN, Kinsel said it was “incredibly random in terms of collaborating and engaging with others.”

“To be honest with you, when you see a faculty member who actually does have a successful collaboration with somebody from another university, that is a rare event, because we just don’t have that many opportunities to sit down with other faculty who have similar research,” he said.

“If I go to a conference, every other person at the conference is doing the same thing I’m doing. I’m not looking to collaborate with them. I need to collaborate with people for whom my work can complement what they’re doing. They’ve got a challenge, they can’t solve it, and I can look at what I’m doing and say, some of the work that I’m doing might actually be able to desk roll to new ideas. This is truly a huge barrier for any faculty member.”

IIN offers a way to share opportunities and information.

“For example, letting somebody at Northern Illinois University know that somebody at Southern Illinois University might actually have a tool or a capability that they don’t have at NIU that a person at SIU can offer and know you can address this new problem that you wouldn’t have thought about or wouldn’t have thought how to do that,” Kinsel said.

He added that when federal funding agencies are considering awarding grants, oftentimes the ability to collaborate across research entities are weighed.

“We’re talking many millions of dollars, but every one of them requires multiple public institution engagement. If you want to compete for those, we need something like the IIN to make those bridges between the different institutions,” he said.

“It’s really important to recognize how unique the IIN actually is. There are not very many states that have anything even close to an equivalent to this.

“So, with that I can go into one of these large dollar grants and actually engage with IIN and through that network meet other people that can compliment the work that I’m trying to do and want to put forward. Here in Illinois we have this network that is incredibly valuable.”

Coalition Building

“I think IIN is one of the best ideas we’ve ever had. This is how we build coalition. You do an asset analysis, you figure out where your gaps are, you figure out what you can do together that you can’t do apart. It’s easy to say and it’s hard to do, but that’s the potential of the IIN in some ways, and what’s really amazing is we have similar problems in different contexts,” Kidwell said.

Cruitt referred to the theme of the panel discussion — universities as the crucible of innovation.

“It’s that diversity on a single campus of intellectual prowess that makes that campus strong. It’s the same thing with the IIN,” Cruitt said.

“When you have a porous ecosystem where ideas, resources, conversations, collaborations, stakeholders at every level of the innovation ecosystem having almost a forced function in a way to collaborate, there is the IIN council with a certain number of members.

“But what I think a lot of people don’t realize is there’s a lot of IIN committees. On those committees, like for our region in Peoria, it’s someone from Illinois Central College, or Heartland Community College, or a startup founder, or someone that’s in bio-manufacturing that are also on that committees.

“That’s all pooled up and goes up into the IIN. That is our powerhouse as an IIN. Without the IIN, we’re just a Peoria thing.”