UofL Foundation names IPR director, announces NTS partnership

The University of Louisville Foundation executive committee on Dec. 22 named a director for the new Institute for Product Realization and selected Louisville’s NTS Development Co. as its development partner on three business and research parks.

The foundation selected David Adams as CEO of the Institute for Product Realization, a center that will promote research and innovation in advanced manufacturing, logistics, renewable energy and analytics and computing. The IPR beta site is located off Brandeis Avenue and includes the FirstBuild facility, Engineering Education Garage and UL Additive Manufacturing Competency Center. The IPR will eventually be moved to a yet-to-be-constructed building in the coming Belknap Engineering and Applied Sciences Research Park. Adams comes to UofL from The BVI Group, an Indianapolis-based consulting firm he founded in 2007 to serve the strategic and operational needs of businesses and private equity firms. He also worked for former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels to lead the operational improvement and merger of the state’s $30 billion pension systems and was a founding member of the executive team that grew i2 Technologies Inc. into a software giant. Adams, who has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in industrial engineering from UofL’s J.B. Speed School of Engineering, starts Jan. 4. In another move, the foundation selected NTS as its official development partner of the Belknap research park, which will be built behind the Speed School, as well as the J.D. Nichols Campus for Innovation and Entrepreneurship in downtown Louisville and the ShelbyHurst Research and Office Park on UofL’s Shelby Campus in eastern Jefferson County. NTS was chosen after it responded to a request for qualifications issued by the foundation in September. It beat out one other respondent, Louisville’s Jefferson Development Group. NTS already has worked with the foundation to build three office buildings at ShelbyHurst and a parking garage on the J.D. Nichols campus.