UTSA launches cybersecurity center on Main Campus pending downtown home
Photo: Scott Ball, Rivard Report
The University of Texas at San Antonio’s $40 million cybersecurity hub is likely more than two years away from completion, but that hasn’t stopped the university from setting up shop in a 25,000-square-foot temporary space on its main campus.
UTSA has locked down agreements with nine industry partners to colocate in the National Security Collaboration Center with 11 more corporations considering teaming up. The collaboration center would create an ecosystem of higher education institutions, federal agencies, and corporate entities in the national security sector within or near an 80,000-square-foot structure UTSA is aiming to build downtown.
“We don’t have time to wait for a new building,” UTSA President Taylor Eighmy said Tuesday during his keynote speech at CyberTexas, a cybersecurity conference taking place at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center Tuesday and Wednesday.
“We’ve learned that momentum is really critical” when it comes to encouraging “these collaborations and collisions between our government partners, our industry partners, and our own faculty, staff, and students,” Eighmy said. “So rather than wait for our new building … why don’t we just get on with the business and purpose of the National Security Collaboration Center? We can’t do it at full scale and size, but it’s better to have these rich relationships and collaborations develop now. That way when we’re ready with our new building we can move this whole enterprise in, and it will already be up and running.”
