![The authentic biotech lab experiences Sonja Lopez-Tellez had as an Austin Community College student will become more plentiful when the college opens a $4.9 million biotech research wet lab in 2016.](local/data/caches/images/scaled/img_00021113_300x300.jpg)
The small, but real, work projects Sonja Lopez-Tellez completed as a biotech student at Austin Community College (ACC) in Texas helped her succeed in two internships, with the second at XBiotech leading to a full-time job.
Authentic work experiences are something ACC biotech students will get a lot more of when the college opens a new $4.9 million biotech research wet lab with business incubator space.
ACC is the first two-year college to receive such significant funds from the Texas Emerging Technology Fund Research Award program. The ACC Biotech Department's application with the support of a dozen community and corporate partners is a bold effort to address the shortage of wet labs that biotech start-up companies need to fine tune their new products and production processes for them.
"Once a company has discovered the value of using our interns to do projects, they ask for more. That is the bottom line ... because we get things done for them that would normally cost them quite a bit of money. And we can accelerate their product development," said Linnea Fletcher, chairman of the ACC's Biotechnology Department. Fletcher has been the principal investigator of two National Science Foundation Advanced Technological Education (ATE) grants and the co-principal investigator of ATE grants for Bio-Link, a National Advanced Technology Education Center of Excellence focused on Biotechnology and Life Sciences at City College of San Francisco.