Friday, standing in a courtyard at STAR Campus, on land that once housed a Chrysler auto plant and its 4,000 workers, Carper said the day the bulldozers arrived to tear that plant down was one of the saddest of his life.

Now, exciting new projects are underway and anticipated in new facilities at STAR Campus, designed to enable collaborative excellence in biopharmaceuticals, health sciences, financial technology, entrepreneurship and innovative manufacturing, to name a few areas of focus.

“There has been an amazing transformation of this place,” Carper said. “We’ll soon have more working here than ever worked in the Chrysler plant and they’ll be good-paying jobs.”

The new grant adds fuel for many future endeavors.

“Today’s announcement is great news for economic development in our region, building upon the success of the STAR Campus,” said Carper, who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. “EDA’s investment in Delaware — from right here at the STAR Campus to the Innovation Space in Wilmington to the Automotive Center for Excellence at Delaware Technical Community College in Georgetown — is paying dividends to Delaware’s economy.”

Visitors Friday toured a section of the STAR Campus that demonstrated the impact of EDA’s investments.

Mike Bowman, director of Delaware Technology Park, took guests through the wet-lab incubator section known as DTP@STAR that grew out of a $500,000 EDA grant in 2016. Startups are selected to operate there based on their technology and business focus, leadership capability, financial status and the desire to locate near UD resources. They get access to top-level facilities, mentoring services and extensive business savvy.

Five years later, DTP@STAR has supported more than 20 companies, creation of 200 jobs, raised about $1 billion in financing and engaged 60 students and interns, said Bowman, who is also state director of the Delaware Small Business Development Center.

One of those companies is RiKarbon, founded by Basu Saha using research he did at UD. RiKarbon develops technologies for renewable products that use unconventional carbon feedstocks, with the goal of reducing carbon emissions.

Another company that started at DTP@STAR now has a market value of more than $1 billion. Prelude Therapeutics moved to a larger incubation space at the Delaware Innovation Space, established in 2018.

EDA also provided support for Delaware Innovation Space Inc., a partnership between UD, the state of Delaware and the DuPont Company. Located at the DuPont Experimental Station in Wilmington, it offers 100,000 square feet of labs and facilities for science-oriented entrepreneurs and startups.

And earlier this year, EDA made a $750,000 investment in the Horn Entrepreneurship Program and its Proof of Concept Fund.

“You are a point of excellence to replicate, potentially, across the country,” Castillo told the UD group. “Our country needs this technological innovation and the commercialization, and I think this is where you are shining the most.”

The Spin In program is administered by UD’s Office of Economic Innovation and Partnerships.

“Through the Spin In program, we are interacting with companies at a very critical time in their lifecycles,” said Charles G. Riordan, vice president for research, scholarship and innovation at UD. “They may be facing a challenge that is a go or no-go decision relative to the success of the company.

“From that perspective, the impact is enormous. And it leverages the talent of the students and faculty. The teams are inherently interdisciplinary. We have teams that involve engineers and scientists, artists, business students — all coming together and understanding not only how their own discipline is involved in the commercialization process, but how that collaboration and understanding of the differences is so critical.”

Much more information about EDA’s University Center program is available online.