With a $6 million donation from one of Utah's prominent families, a new center at the University of Utah now has the legs to encourage innovation and discovery among students across the state.

The Sorenson Legacy Foundation on Wednesday provided the funding to get the already influential program off the ground, said Jack Brittain, dean of the U.'s David Eccles School of Business. The James LeVoy Sorenson Center will serve students and faculty together, creating an interdisciplinary backdrop for the fostering of technological ideas and projects.

Already, the program has founded two separate companies, started by students with innovative projects of their own.

"The innovative thought process in place showcases and provides the opportunities for students and schools throughout the state and gives them the attention to move forward and turn their ideas into success," said James Lee Sorenson, board member of the Sorenson Legacy Foundation. He said the hands-on commercialization of ideas and technologies will benefit not only the students involved but the community as well.

The nonprofit Sorenson Legacy Foundation — established by the family to promote charitable, religious, educational, literary and scientific endeavors — said it chose to donate to the U.'s program because it carries James LeVoy Sorenson's inventive and entrepreneurial vision for discovery and research.

"It's a fitting connection with my father and what he stands for," James Lee Sorenson said.

Sorenson's father invented the first computerized heart-monitoring system, the first modern venous catheters and disposable surgical masks, and he devised cost-effective ways to manufacture such health-care products.

"Things like this are already happening on campus. The center makes it happen on purpose," Brittain said Tuesday.

The endowment to the school will allow the facility to sponsor faculty research grants, hire a facilitator to run the center and its multiple programs, continue offering the statewide student design and idea competition "Tech Titans," as well as host academic and faculty conferences that help showcase the best technological advances in the state.

"Innovation is hard to teach from a textbook," James Lee Sorenson said, adding that the center will help facilitate a broader thought process among academia, "challenging paradigms and exploring different ways of doing things."

The center currently operates in temporary space at the university but will occupy permanent space in the new Eccles School of Business when it is completed in several years.

"(My father) would want to feel like he provided some inspiration or encouraged fostering of ideas," James Lee Sorenson said. "He'd want to give someone faith and hope in their own ideas to help them succeed."

The Sorensons' donation, Brittain said, is essential to make the program a reality on campus.

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