LEXINGTON, KY - When University of Kentucky alumnus Davis Marksbury founded Exstream Software in the basement of his Lexington home in 1998, little did he realize that he would someday lead the private sector financing of an entire UK building devoted to engineering and computer sciences. Exstream went on to develop software that so successfully streamlines the creation and delivery of personalized documents and other communications materials that the company captured the attention of Hewlett-Packard and was acquired by HP in January of 2008.
Marksbury and UK President Lee Todd today presided over groundbreaking ceremonies for a new $18.6 million Davis Marksbury Building that will house the second phase of the university's high-tech "Digital Village" concept. The site is located on Rose Street between Maxwell Street and Euclid Avenue.
The LEED certified, three-story, 45,014-gross-square-foot building will house the UK Center for Visualization and Virtual Environments, the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Department of Computer Science. All are part of the UK College of Engineering.
Its roof will include photovoltaic collectors to convert sunlight into electrical power to help serve the building and provide research opportunities. It will also comply with requirements under the Americans with Disabilities Act regarding accessibility for physically challenged persons.
The first floor will house an administrative suite, a presentation/multipurpose room that seats up to 100, a visualization lounge and media suite and a computer lab. The second and third floors will include hard and soft laboratories for computer-program development and research, as well as faculty offices.
The building's basement will consist primarily of mechanical and electrical equipment rooms but also will include a central computer server room. An emergency generator also will be situated in the basement.
UK received three gifts totaling $9.3 million for use with matching state funds to finance construction of the building. The contributions included a $6 million donation from the Marksbury Family Foundation, created by Davis and Beverly Marksbury. Another $3.6 million was provided by private donors, with the remaining $9.3 million coming from the state's Research Challenge Trust Fund.
Hewlett Packard's acquisition of Extsream offered a glimpse of the potential value to the local economy of research-driven local start-ups. More startup companies are formed by UK faculty and staff entrepreneurs than at any of the university's 19 benchmark institutions per $10 million in annual research expenditures according to a recently released report by the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) for 2007. UK's benchmark institutions include the University of Wisconsin and the universities of Maryland, Michigan, Illinois and Florida.
AUTM also reported that UK climbed from 39th in 2005 to 7th in 2007 among all public and private universities for developing new technology-based businesses. In the area of licensing, UK ranked 13th in licensing income compared to its benchmarks. During last fiscal year, UK recorded $1.7 million in gross licensing revenue and a total of 151 licenses.