Chicago: Our Chosen Home

1. A Place for an Institution

Choosing a home for NaS was not a branding exercise. The place where a research institution is built affects the people it can learn from, the infrastructure it can reach, the problems it encounters, the standards it absorbs, and the community to which it becomes accountable. A durable institution grows through repeated contact: with scientists and clinicians, with students and manufacturers, with patients and neighborhoods, with funders and critics, and with other organizations whose work has survived long enough to become part of a city’s fabric.

Chicago is unusually suited to that kind of institution-building. It is a global city at the center of the continent; a university city, a hospital city, a manufacturing city, a transportation city, and a city of neighborhoods. Its scientific assets are not confined to one campus or one industry. They stretch from Hyde Park to Streeterville, through the Illinois Medical District and Fulton Market, into the pharmaceutical and medical-device corridor of Lake County, and outward to national laboratories, community colleges, production facilities, and logistics networks across northern Illinois.

NaS chose Chicago because our ambitions require that full system. We want to work across biological knowledge, artificial intelligence, advanced computing, drug discovery, and eventually experimental infrastructure. Chicago does not offer a single preassembled answer to that mission. It offers the more valuable thing: a dense set of serious capabilities, connected by geography and civic life, with room for a new research organization to contribute.

2. A Life-Science Economy at Meaningful Scale

Greater Chicago already operates at a scale that matters to the life sciences. World Business Chicago reports more than 90,000 life-science professionals across the region and more than $45 billion in life-science gross regional product. It identifies the metro as a national center for biotechnology, medical technology, health innovation, and medical-device manufacturing. Those numbers matter because scientific ecosystems become more resilient when expertise exists across many employers and disciplines rather than inside a single dominant company.

The region’s geography creates several complementary clusters. Downtown and the Near West Side are adding laboratories, incubators, university-linked programs, and company-building infrastructure. The North Side and northern suburbs connect research hospitals and universities to established pharmaceutical, diagnostics, device, and healthcare companies. Lake County contains one of the country’s largest concentrations of life-science companies and the largest such concentration in the Midwest, according to Illinois’ economic growth plan.

This is not yet Boston-Cambridge or the Bay Area, and pretending otherwise would weaken the argument for Chicago. The region has historically produced more biomedical research than it has converted into locally scaled biotechnology companies. Capital, experienced company-building talent, and dense translational infrastructure remain areas for growth. But that gap is also part of the opportunity. Chicago has the research base, industrial history, workforce, and civic scale to build a stronger translation engine, and new institutions can matter here in ways they might not in an already saturated ecosystem.

3. Universities, Medical Schools, and Academic Medicine

Chicago’s strongest scientific advantage is the density of institutions that create, test, and teach biomedical knowledge. Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Illinois Chicago form three major research anchors with distinct strengths and patient communities. The Chicago Biomedical Consortium was created around these universities precisely because collaboration across them can move discoveries further than any institution working alone.

Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine sits in downtown Chicago within a major academic medical environment. Feinberg reports $695.4 million in awards for the 2024-2025 academic year and maintains 34 research core facilities across its Chicago and Evanston campuses. Its relationships with Northwestern Medicine, Lurie Children’s research programs, Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, the Jesse Brown VA Medical Center, and other affiliates connect fundamental science, engineering, clinical investigation, rehabilitation, and patient care.

On the South Side, the University of Chicago places the Pritzker School of Medicine, biological and physical sciences, molecular engineering, and UChicago Medicine within one interdisciplinary environment. Pritzker reports $358 million in fiscal-year 2024 NIH awards to the university and affiliated hospitals. Its location on the main university campus makes medicine part of a larger intellectual system that includes computation, engineering, public policy, economics, and the physical sciences. This is the kind of boundary-crossing environment required for modern biological research.

UIC adds the scale and public mission of a major urban research university and academic health enterprise. Its College of Medicine, founded in 1882, is one of the largest medical schools in the United States and operates across Chicago, Peoria, and Rockford. In Chicago, it sits within the Illinois Medical District alongside colleges of pharmacy, nursing, dentistry, applied health sciences, and public health. That concentration matters for work that must connect discovery with clinical practice, public health, implementation, and the realities of caring for a large and diverse population.

The wider region extends the network further: Rosalind Franklin University in North Chicago; Loyola University Chicago and its health sciences campus; Rush University and Rush University Medical Center; the Illinois Institute of Technology; DePaul; and other institutions that educate clinicians, scientists, engineers, data specialists, and operators. Argonne National Laboratory and Fermilab add national-scale computing, physics, materials, and engineering capability. Together, these organizations make Chicago less a collection of isolated campuses than a broad scientific landscape.

4. Pharmacy, Drug Discovery, and Translational Science

For an organization interested in medicines and biomedical intelligence, Chicago’s pharmacy tradition is especially important. UIC’s Retzky College of Pharmacy began as the Chicago College of Pharmacy in 1859, making it one of the oldest pharmacy colleges in the United States. The college describes its program as the country’s largest and most comprehensive, with more than 200 clinical faculty and seven college-run ambulatory pharmacies. It is also a major research institution working across drug discovery and development, infectious disease, cancer, women’s health, pharmacoepidemiology, personalized medicine, and community health outcomes.

This combination of pharmaceutical science and clinical practice is exactly what translation requires. Medicinal chemistry, pharmacognosy, drug delivery, molecular biology, health outcomes, pharmacy practice, and patient care sit within one academic health enterprise. UIC’s pharmaceutical-sciences programs are located in the Illinois Medical District, near hospitals, research laboratories, public-health expertise, and a deeply varied patient population.

The city’s medical schools and hospitals add clinical research, trial infrastructure, disease-specific institutes, biobanks, imaging, and real-world care environments. Chicago’s value is not simply the number of institutions; it is the possibility of moving among levels of inquiry: from molecular mechanism to therapeutic design, from model to measurement, and from a statistical signal to the conditions under which care is actually delivered.

5. An Industry Base That Reaches from Discovery to Manufacturing

Chicago’s life-science economy is not purely academic. Northern Illinois is home to companies whose work spans research, drug development, diagnostics, devices, nutrition, manufacturing, regulatory operations, and global commercialization. AbbVie’s world headquarters and 570-acre North Chicago campus bring together discovery research, development sciences, genomics, clinical work, regulatory functions, manufacturing, and other capabilities across immunology, neuroscience, oncology, aesthetics, and specialty medicine. Abbott, which began in a Chicago pharmacy, is headquartered at Abbott Park and operates globally across diagnostics, medical devices, nutrition, and medicines.

The regional company base also includes Baxter’s long-standing Deerfield presence; Astellas Pharma US in Northbrook; Fresenius Kabi, Lundbeck, CSL Behring, Horizon’s legacy operations, medical-device and diagnostics companies, contract manufacturers, suppliers, and specialized service organizations throughout the suburbs. These companies create an experienced workforce that understands what happens after a promising experiment: process development, quality systems, clinical operations, regulatory strategy, production, distribution, and support at global scale.

Recent investment shows that this base is not merely historical. In 2025 Vantive, the kidney and vital-organ therapy company separated from Baxter, announced a $23 million U.S. headquarters investment in Deerfield. Illinois also announced a $195 million AbbVie expansion in North Chicago to strengthen active-pharmaceutical-ingredient manufacturing. Germany-based Vetter Pharma has been developing a 160,000-square-foot commercial manufacturing site in Des Plaines after establishing its earlier U.S. clinical manufacturing operation in Skokie. These projects reinforce a distinctive regional advantage: Chicago can connect research and company formation to the physical work of making complex healthcare products.

That connection matters to NaS. Scientific software cannot be designed as though discovery ends when a model produces an answer. Medicines and devices must be formulated, produced, tested, documented, shipped, monitored, and improved. A region that understands both computation and production offers a more honest environment for building systems intended to affect the material world.

6. A Translation Ecosystem Taking Shape

Chicago is building more of the connective tissue that turns academic work into companies and shared platforms. The Chicago Biomedical Consortium works across Illinois universities to identify promising science, provide milestone-based support, and develop biotechnology companies rooted in the region. MATTER supports healthcare innovation; Portal Innovations and Fulton Labs add company-building and laboratory infrastructure; university technology-transfer offices and hospital innovation programs provide additional routes from research to application.

The Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Chicago represents an important vote of confidence in the city’s collaborative capacity. Built around the University of Chicago, Northwestern, and UIC, the Biohub is focused on new technologies for understanding inflammation and human tissue, with laboratories, meeting space, and a biofoundry intended to support cross-institutional science. Its selection of Chicago demonstrated that the city’s universities can compete together for major scientific platforms rather than only as separate institutions.

The region’s investments in quantum technology are relevant as well. The Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park on Chicago’s South Side is designed to connect government, universities, national laboratories, and industry. Quantum computing is not a near-term substitute for today’s biomedical computing, but the park’s cryogenic, microelectronics, networking, and research infrastructure could create long-range capabilities for chemistry, materials, sensing, optimization, and scientific computation.

What makes this moment compelling is not that Chicago’s ecosystem is finished. It is that multiple layers are forming at once: laboratories, incubators, translational funding, venture-building organizations, advanced computing, and public investment. NaS wants to participate in that formation by collaborating where useful, publishing what we learn, and helping create tools that allow more of the region’s science to become durable capability.

7. The Infrastructure of a Continental City

Chicago’s central location is often described casually, but for science and manufacturing it is a concrete operational advantage. The metropolitan region is North America’s principal rail interchange: the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning reports that roughly one quarter of U.S. freight trains and half of all intermodal trains pass through the region. Ten interstate highways, six Class I railroads, O’Hare’s air-cargo system, and access to Great Lakes and Mississippi River maritime networks connect the city to suppliers, research partners, production sites, and customers across the continent.

In 2023, nearly 700 million tons of goods valued at more than $1 trillion moved to, from, or within northeastern Illinois. In 2024, the regional freight industry employed more than 210,000 people across more than 14,000 establishments. The scale can create congestion and environmental burdens that require serious planning, but it also means that Chicago possesses logistics knowledge and physical infrastructure few American regions can match.

The same network supports one of the country’s largest industrial markets and a deep manufacturing economy. For biotechnology, diagnostics, laboratory automation, medical devices, and eventually robotic scientific infrastructure, this matters. Components, reagents, instruments, cold-chain shipments, replacement parts, and finished goods do not move through abstractions. They move through airports, rail yards, highways, warehouses, and production floors. Chicago knows how to move physical systems at scale.

8. Access to the Country and the World

O’Hare makes Chicago unusually accessible for a city in the middle of the continent. As of July 2026, the Chicago Department of Aviation listed approximately 1,154 daily direct flights from O’Hare to 197 U.S. cities and 150 daily direct flights to 69 international destinations. That reach makes it practical to maintain relationships with laboratories, universities, companies, conferences, investors, and collaborators across North America, Europe, Asia, and beyond without treating the coasts as the only gateways to the world.

Chicago is also one of the few cities with direct rail service to two major airports. The CTA Blue Line serves O’Hare and the Orange Line serves Midway, while Metra and Amtrak connect downtown to the suburbs and other cities. The regional network is imperfect and must continue improving, but it gives students, employees, visitors, and partners multiple ways to reach the city and move through it.

Central Time offers a quieter but useful advantage. A Chicago team can work with both coasts during the normal day and maintain manageable overlap with Europe. For a research organization intended to collaborate nationally while remaining rooted in one place, Chicago is not peripheral. It is a practical meeting point.

9. Education as a Regional Pipeline

A scientific institution needs a pipeline wider than elite graduate programs. Chicago’s educational system stretches from neighborhood schools and career programs through community colleges, research universities, medical schools, and postgraduate training. Chicago Public Schools offers career and technical education pathways in health sciences, information technology, agricultural science, manufacturing, and pre-engineering, along with dual-credit and early-college options. These programs create opportunities for students to encounter scientific and technical work before deciding that such careers belong to someone else.

City Colleges of Chicago connects accessible education to the region’s economy through programs in healthcare, natural sciences, advanced manufacturing, information technology, and transportation and logistics. Truman College’s biotechnology associate program includes hands-on training in the biomanufacturing of products using bacterial, yeast, algal, and eukaryotic cell systems. That is an unusually direct bridge between community-college education and the technical workforce required by a growing biotechnology sector.

Chicago’s school systems are large, varied, and unequal; they should not be romanticized. Access to excellent education is not distributed evenly across neighborhoods, and any institution claiming the city as home inherits a responsibility to understand that reality. The strength of Chicago is not that every pathway is already fair. It is that the city contains the schools, colleges, universities, employers, civic organizations, and communities from which stronger pathways can be built.

For NaS, education is not separate from research capacity. The future workforce for biomedical computing will need biologists who understand data, engineers who understand experimental constraints, clinicians who can evaluate computational claims, technicians who can operate sophisticated equipment, and leaders capable of communicating across all of them. Chicago can educate that workforce at every level.

10. Diversity Is Scientific Infrastructure

Chicago is a city of people, languages, histories, and neighborhoods. Census data for 2020-2024 estimate that 20.9 percent of city residents were born outside the United States and that 35.4 percent of residents age five and older spoke a language other than English at home. Across 77 community areas, the city includes major Black, Latino, Asian, European, Middle Eastern, immigrant, refugee, and multigenerational communities, each with distinct institutions and experiences.

For biomedical research, diversity is not decorative. Disease burden, environmental exposure, access to care, trust in institutions, language, diet, work, housing, and family history all shape health. A city with wide human variation forces scientific systems to confront the limits of narrow datasets and universal claims. It creates opportunities for more representative research, but only when communities are treated as partners and beneficiaries rather than convenient sources of data.

Chicago’s culture also makes it a place where people can build a life, not merely hold a job. Its museums, libraries, architecture, lakefront, parks, food, theater, visual art, comedy, and music traditions are not secondary to institution-building. The city helped create modern improvisation, house music, footwork, gospel, urban blues, and distinctive traditions of jazz and soul. Its neighborhood cultural institutions preserve histories that are local in origin and global in influence.

Scientific work is difficult and long. Institutions retain people when those people can find community, identity, beauty, challenge, and belonging outside the laboratory. Chicago offers that depth without requiring everyone to become the same kind of person or live the same kind of life.

11. Why Chicago Fits NaS

NaS is not being built as a coastal imitation. Chicago’s character is better aligned with the institution we want to become: ambitious without requiring spectacle, technically serious, shaped by industry as well as theory, and conscious that knowledge must eventually survive contact with the physical world. This is a city that designed skyscrapers, reversed a river, organized continental rail, built global companies, trained generations of physicians, and repeatedly turned practical constraints into new forms of engineering and culture.

The city also rewards the long view. Chicago’s most important institutions were not weekend projects. They were built through decades of teaching, care, experimentation, philanthropy, public investment, labor, conflict, and revision. NaS intends to follow that institutional timescale. Models will change. Hardware will change. Individual research programs may succeed, fail, or evolve. The organization must be capable of learning through all of it.

Chicago offers enough scientific density to support serious work, enough industrial depth to keep that work grounded, enough connectivity to remain globally engaged, and enough unfinished possibility for contribution to matter. That combination is rare.

12. Our Commitment to Chicago

Choosing Chicago creates an obligation. NaS should not simply use the city as an address while directing all value elsewhere. As the organization develops, we intend to publish research openly where responsible, collaborate across institutions, create tools that expand local scientific capacity, support pathways into technical work, and contribute to a life-science ecosystem that is more connected and more representative of the city around it.

We will begin modestly. NaS is still founder-led and early. We do not yet possess the laboratories, workforce, partnerships, or resources implied by our long-term vision. Our immediate responsibility is to do credible work, describe it honestly, invite serious criticism, and build relationships before making promises on behalf of communities or institutions we have not earned the right to represent.

But the direction is clear. We chose Chicago because it contains the science, medicine, industry, infrastructure, education, culture, and human complexity required to build something durable. We chose it because the city has already given the world consequential institutions. Its next scientific institution should be built here, with care, for the long term.