SSTI Digest

Foundations and philanthropists are playing increasingly important financial roles for many academic and regional technology-based economic development (TBED) efforts. The latest issue of Philanthropy News Digest, the weekly electronic newsletter of the FoundationCenter, highlights three recent announcements that provide examples of the size, scope and opportunity presented by these types of awards. The announcements are summarized below. The Danforth Foundation awarded the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center a $50 million challenge grant that can be earned by an equal amount of matching gifts. The award will contribute one dollar to the center for each dollar raised from other donors to the center's endowment. The nonprofit research institute focuses on plant science research that leads to increased agricultural production, more nutritious food, and a cleaner environment. Cleveland-based philanthropist and Harvard alumnus Albert Weatherhead III and his wife, Celia, recently created the Weatherhead Endowment for Collaborative Science and Technology at Harvard University. The $30…

For many university tech transfer operations, the need to generate revenues to support the office and attempt to meet the often pie-in-the-sky expectations of school administrators can force licensing efforts toward only the biggest deals. Thanks to a large donation to serve as an endowment, the University of Southern California (USC) Viterbi School of Engineering will be able to count on $1 million in interest income to support its technology transfer activities. USC alumnus and successful venture capitalist Mark Stevens donated $22 million to the school for the creation of a technology commercialization institute. The Mark and Mary Stevens Institute for Technology Commercialization (SITeC) will have a dual mission -- provide a professional staff to help researchers and commercialize new technologies. Staff at the institute will provide a full range of consulting services, from market analyses to third-party investor introductions, effectively building new links to industry in addressing the overlapping technical, legal and business aspects of commercializing. One of the changes for…

Dr. John Reed, president and CEO of The Burnham Institute, was appointed to the Independent Citizen's Oversight Committee that will govern the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine created last month.

Just as SSTI and other post-election analysts predicted, California’s recent passage of a $3 billion commitment to stem cell research is triggering responses from across the country. Wisconsin is the first to outline a specific, strategic reaction to the California referendum in an effort to retain or regain momentum in the race to encourage bio-based economic growth. Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle announced last week his plans to invest nearly $750 million in state funds to support biotechnology, health sciences and stem cell research. According to Gov. Doyle, the two states are not in competition; rather, he suspects there will be a synergy between them. "Wisconsin can’t match California dollar for dollar, but California can’t match what Wisconsin already has - including the best scientists in the world and first class research institutions," Gov. Doyle said. The Wisconsin strategy re-emphasizes several elements of the “Grow Wisconsin” plan (see the Sept. 19, 2003 issue of the Digest) and legislation passed last year to increase venture capital investments. Key, new elements include…

Using data from its 2004 Best Performing Cities Index, Milken has generated a comprehensive table ranking cities by one- and five-year measurements of job growth, wages and salaries, and relative high tech gross domestic product (GDP) growth, and other measurements. SSTI would like to draw readers' attention to one of those other measurements, Milken's high-tech GDP location quotient (LQ), which may be of some value to the tech-based economic development community. LQ is defined as a measure of high-tech concentration, with the U.S. given a value of 1.0. For the Milken study, metro areas having an LQ higher than 1.0 are said to be more concentrated in high tech sectors than the U.S. Based on 2003 data, 54 of Milken's 200 largest cities are at or above 1.0. At the heart of Silicon Valley, the San Jose, Calif., metro area continues to rank first with a value of 3.48, followed by Boulder-Longmont, Colo. (2nd), Albuquerque (3rd), Boise, Idaho (4th) and Portland-Vancouver (5th). Each of the 10 measures presented in Milken's table, as well as overall rankings, are fully sortable for the…

What policies, investments and programs would be most effective for communities trying to attract, retain or build a local pharmaceutical industry? Research parks? Tax incentives? Biotech seed capital funds? The answers one gets will vary, but using historical data on patent activity and observing the location of the largest pharmaceutical companies, a group of researchers suggests investments in academic R&D that lead to publications is not a bad place to start. While earlier research has shown the U.S. biotech industry has grown around "star" researchers, (see Intellectual Capital and the Birth of U.S. Biotechnology Enterprises, for example), a working paper summarized in the latest Economic Paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco (FRBSF) finds "exposure to an additional 1,000 scientific papers authored in a locality by individuals at public institutions has about the same effect on a firm's patent count as an additional $1 million of R&D expenditures." Alternately, "proximity to the labs of competing drug firms that are publishing many scientific papers…

Duane Roth is the new executive director of UCSD CONNECT. Roth was CEO of Alliance Pharmaceuticals in San Diego.

While the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) have voiced caution and funded efforts to understand the potential societal and environmental implications of nanotechnology deployment, both agencies announced much larger funding commitments - totaling $213 million - to expedite commercial applications for the explosive field. Nanotech Solutions for Cancer Carrying a federal five-year price tag of $144.3 million, the NIH's National Cancer Institute (NCI) is forming the NCI Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer, a comprehensive, integrated initiative encompassing researchers, clinicians, and public and private organizations that have joined forces to develop and translate cancer-related nanotechnology research into clinical practice. The new NCI Alliance is one of the first steps in implementing the Cancer Nanotechnology Plan, which was developed over the past 18 months with the input of a broad cross-section of the cancer research and clinical oncology communities. The NCI Alliance consists of four major program activities: Centers of Cancer…

More than half since recession "officially" ended There is little comforting news in a new statistical report for workers in the U.S. information and communication technologies (ICT) sector. Researchers from the University of Illinois-Chicago found the sector lost 403,300 jobs between March 2001 and April 2004. A staggering 200,000 of the high-wage jobs were lost since the recession was officially declared over in November 2001, making the notion of a jobless recovery a significant understatement for the sector. The resilience of the regional ICT sectors and the overall economies of the seven profiled metropolitan areas are being tested with the incredible losses suffered since the bubble burst in March 2001. The following list presents the percentage change in total ICT employment between March 2001 and April 2004 for the seven primary metropolitan statistical areas (PMSA): San Francisco (-49.0%) Boston (-34.1%) San Jose (-33.1%) Dallas (-30.2%) Chicago (-25.9%) Seattle (-10.8%) Washington (-2.5%) For the nation, a reduction of 18.8 percent of the total ICT workforce was lost…

As part of a new initiative to address pressing ethical, legal and social questions raised by recent advances in genetic and genomic research, the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) has awarded approximately $20 million in grants to fund interdisciplinary centers within universities around the country over the next five years. NHGRI is one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). According to NIH, each of the centers will assemble a team of experts in several disciplines such as bioethics, law, behavioral and social sciences, clinical research, theology, public policy and genetic and genomic research to develop innovative research approaches focused on specific sets of issues related to genomic research. The centers’ output, according to NIH, will be critical in formulating and implementing effective and equitable health and social polices related to genomic research. The Department of Energy and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development both contributed significant funding to the effort, which has established the first four centers within the following…

New York City Launches Second Biotech Incubator Companies wanting to commercialize new technologies can now bring their companies to Brooklyn, with the June opening of a new technology incubator located near Downstate University's biochemistry department. The Advanced Biotechnology Incubator will eventually house up to 30 companies, according to Eva Brown Cramer, vice president for biotechnology and scientific affairs at Downstate. The $12 million incubator, funded by both government and private sources, is a first for Brooklyn and second to be opened in New York City. The first was opened in 1995 at Columbia University, according to the Daily News. Colorado Incubator Merges With Venture Company, Becomes CTEK In a continuing effort to expand its services throughout the state, the Colorado Technology Incubator, a community-based business catalyst, has merged with Colorado Venture Centers, changing its name to CTEK, the Daily Camera reports. According to Vice President of CTEK, Mike Murphy, part of tacking on ventures to its name means several venture centers and plans for a new corporate office to launch such new community centers are…

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), the largest federal funding source for life sciences research conducted by small tech firms, has selected the Larta Institute to manage its nationwide Commercialization Assistance Program. The multi-year $2.5 million award will target Phase II recipients of the NIH Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer Programs (SBIR/STTR). "NIH is interested in seeing products derived from SBIR funding make their way into the marketplace for the benefit of the American people," said Jo Anne Goodnight, NIH SBIR/STTR Program Coordinator. "We are committed not only to supporting high quality research through NIH SBIR awards, but to investing in the long-term success of our SBIR-winners." Los Angeles-based Larta, will provide assistance in all aspects of commercialization, including: business development, funding and capital acquisition, government regulatory processes, intellectual property protection, licensing strategies, and merger and acquisition opportunities. The new program will involve a combination of training…