The new Silicon Valley? UT, ORNL and TVA join together to launch tech startup accelerator The Knoxville News-Sentinel 1 hr ago Brenna McDermott, Knoxville News Sentinel $20M grant awarded to make Oak Ridge Institute a top research facility Replay Video UP NEXT Three of East Tennessee's major institutions are launching a collaboration aimed at making the Knoxville-Oak Ridge corridor a national innovation hub. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Tennessee Valley Authority and the University of Tennessee System are partnering with worldwide firm Techstars to launch a startup accelerator that will foster the growth of 30 technology companies over three years. "We believe this is a start of a future collaboration," UT System President Randy Boyd told Knox News. "Working together, we can make a profound impact in the community. I think Techstars is a great project by itself, but maybe the bigger story is this new degree of collaboration between these three organizations."