“Growth” would be a good word to describe North Dakota State’s Research and Technology Park.

The research center located north of NDSU’s main campus received a Department of Commerce award in 2006 for technology based economic development and is a member of the Association of University Research Parks. Several programs find their home at the Research and Technology Park, including nanoscience technology, the center for computationally assisted transactions and the Innovation Challenge.

The park is also home to an incubator building, opened in 2007 to assist startup tech companies.

“The incubator clients are assisted by resources from the park,” and they are trying “to help make the companies more successful than they would be on their own,” said Chuck Hoge, the park’s interim executive director.

The park’s website says it “provides academic researchers and private-sector partners a place to combine talents to develop new technologies, methods and systems.”

The Innovation Challenge, another program of the park, began in 2010 and has grown to 98 students participating on 53 teams for awards presented March 1.

The challenge awards $27,000 in cash prizes to participating students and their ideas.

The research park is also used by companies like John Deere and Appareo for electronics design, ranging from aviation to off-highway use.

The park has “roughly five companies in the incubator that are commercializing technologies developed in the labs at NDSU,” Hoge said.

The park also has companies that are using bio composites to replace plastics, software companies, a coatings company and more.

“We are proud to host the electronics design for two of the three largest ag manufacturers in the world,” Hoge said.

NDSU employs more than 550 people in the park, including 138 undergraduates and 286 graduate students. The park has six buildings totaling 295,000 square feet on 55 acres of land.

“We are very proud of the graduates of the park and incubator,” Hoge said.