SSTI Digest

Gov. Jennifer Granholm today signed legislation creating Centers of Energy Excellence, a program designed to bring companies, academic institutions, and the state together to create jobs in alternative and advanced energy. The initiative, passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, is part of an overall job creation and economic stimulus package proposed by the governor in her State of the State address earlier this year (see the Jan. 30, 2008 issue of the Digest).   To be administered through the Michigan Economic Development Corp., the Centers of Energy Excellence will support the development, growth and sustainability of alternative energy industry clusters in Michigan by identifying and/or locating a base company in a geographic region with the necessary business and supply-chain infrastructure. These centers will match the base company with universities, national labs and training centers to accelerate next-generation research, workforce development and commercialization.      Under the new law, which is effective immediately, the Michigan Strategic Fund (MSF) is authorized to allocate up to $45 million from the 21st…

National Governors Association Twelve states recently received grants of $50,000 from the National Governors Association (NGA) Center for Best Practices to support clean energy initiatives and to overcome obstacles preventing the adoption of clean energy technologies in their region. The awards were made through NGA’s Clean Energy State Grant Program, a part of the association’s Securing a Clean Energy Future Initiative. Several companies and foundations, including American Electric Power, Dominion Resources, The Ford Motor Company and The Rockefeller Fund, have provided financial support for the grants, which are intended to fund state projects that support research, analysis, training or outreach to advance clean energy implementation. Highlights from the list of awardees include: Colorado - for the Colorado Carbon Fund to provide carbon offsets for consumers and to fund community-based clean energy projects; Maryland - to fund EmPOWER Maryland, which offers energy efficiency programs to low-income consumers; Hawaii - for the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative and efforts to evaluate the costs and benefits of electric vehicles and their supporting…

Compiling award and proposal statistics by state for fiscal year 2007, SSTI finds the 10 states with the most awards in FY 2007 were California (1201), Massachusetts (731), Maryland (342), Virginia (322), New York (297), Texas (269), Colorado (254), Ohio (240), Pennsylvania (211) and Washington (160). Compared to the top states for FY06, Maryland moved into the third spot from sixth last year, pushing Virginia to fourth place. New York climbed from eighth place to fifth place, and Texas, Colorado and Ohio each fell from their position last year.   SSTI has prepared a table showing FY07 Phase I SBIR data for all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia. Statistics include awards, proposals and award-to-proposal conversion rates for nine of the 12 participating agencies (the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Education and the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declined to provide proposal statistics). The table is available at: http://www.ssti.org/Digest/Tables/070908t.htm   SSTI’s FY01-07 SBIR statistics provide seven years of data to evaluate award, proposal and conversion…

The U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation recently announced that the U.S. had completed its contribution to the international Large Hadron Collider (LHC) Project on budget and ahead of schedule. By the end of the year, the LHC at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) laboratory near Geneva will generate its first particle collisions and research output. Total U.S. contribution to the project is about $531 million of the $5.89 billion cost of the project. Although the U.S. is not a CERN member state, U.S. scientists will comprise the largest contingent from any single nation. LHC operations are expected to yield greater understanding of particle behavior under circumstances that cannot currently be observed. Accelerating and colliding particles with the energy concentrations generated within the LHC may reveal a great deal about the origin and nature of mass, dark matter, dark energy, and anti-matter, and could lead to the development of a unified theory of universal forces. The accelerator will be the largest collider on Earth and will tap a distributed computer network that will represent the world’s most powerful…

Cynics will tell you politicians rarely let facts get in the way of their policy positions and one doesn’t have to look terribly hard to find anecdotal evidence to support that conclusion. One hopes – expects, even – in most cases, however, that elected officials have people more grounded in reality working for them in the trenches of the state or federal executive branch. Some will be civil servants who have dedicated their careers toward addressing specific public policy issues; others will be politically appointed individuals serving for a portion or all of the term of office for the elected leader. How well facts influence these two groups of public employees varies greatly across individuals and office.   The role science can serve to influence or guide the development of policy at the federal level also has varied greatly by administration and economic times. The current economic climate – with the increased importance given to innovation and competitiveness – has many calling for sound science and technology advice being given greater attention through key appointments in the federal and state levels of government. …

On Monday, President Bush signed the $161.8 billion supplemental appropriations bill for the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, 2008. Though the appropriation primarily provides funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the bill also includes almost $3.6 billion in non-war funding. Of this, $400 million was approved for U.S. science programs. The new funding will support programs that were originally authorized by the America COMPETES Act and will help several energy-related national laboratories avoid layoffs anticipated due to previous budget cuts. The $400 million in science spending will be divided among the major science agencies, including: $150 million for the National Institutes for Health (NIH), to be merged into current NIH spending and divided proportionally among the institutes, centers and common fund for FY 2008; $62.5 million for the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science, which a House Rules Committee explanatory statement stipulated should be used to end any layoffs due to budgetary constraints; $62.5 million for the National Science Foundation (NSF), including $22.5 million for research and related activities, and $40 million for…

Coming together for a special one-day session last week, the South Carolina Legislature voted to override a line-item veto issued by Gov. Mark Sanford concerning the funding of the state’s Endowed Chairs program, now called the S.C. Centers for Economic Excellence. The override raises the budget allocation for the program from $20 million to $30 million, which surpasses the original multi-year cap of $200 million set for the Endowed Chairs/Centers of Economic Excellence program, when enacted in 2002. The program uses lottery proceeds to fund strategic faculty positions at the state’s three public research universities: Clemson University, the Medical University of South Carolina, and the University of South Carolina.   In a message to the General Assembly dated June 11, Gov. Sanford outlined the following reasons for his office’s concern with the legislation: While the program initially began as a dollar-for-dollar match between state and non-state funds, the program has drifted to be “overwhelmingly driven” by public funds, as non-state funds have not been collected; The requirements for spending the money have been…

Arizona legislators approved the fiscal year 2009 budget last week, providing funds for proposals aimed at stimulating the state’s economy through investments in higher education infrastructure and increasing R&D activity.   Proceeds from an expansion of the state’s lottery will finance $1 billion in bonding for construction projects across the state’s three universities, including $470 million for completion of the Phoenix biomedical campus and upgrades to several buildings. The stimulus plan, backed by a coalition of business, civic, nonprofit and educational groups, is twofold. First, the plan aims to boost job creation in the declining construction industry, and second, the infrastructure improvements will allow the state to accommodate for future growth at the universities in order to retain a knowledge-based workforce. The investment is a critical component of Gov. Janet Napolitano’s plan to double the number of bachelor degrees earned in the state by 2020.   Although universities will receive increased funds for capital construction, their overall operating budgets will sustain $50 million in cuts…

The Louisiana State Legislature recently approved several bills as part of a comprehensive package designed to revamp the state’s workforce development programs to focus on job training in emerging industries to ensure these fields have a highly qualified labor pool in the coming years.   The workforce reform package is centered on the creation of the Louisiana Workforce Commission, which will replace the state’s Department of Labor. The new commission will oversee the entire workforce development system and is charged with integrating workforce development initiatives through educational and training programs, with the purpose of developing a highly skilled workforce. A Workforce Investment Council also will be established to set workforce training priorities based on input from business leaders.   With an estimated 100,000 job vacancies across the state, lawmakers also passed legislation aimed at helping companies fill current workforce needs. HB 1018 establishes the Louisiana Community and Technical College System Workforce Training Rapid Response Fund and dedicates $10 million annually to supplement the cost of high-demand…

Our German isn't what it should be and online translators weren't as helpful as we'd expected, but we wanted to make readers aware of the size of the investment Berlin is making over the next four years to recruit star faculty to its four research universities and the four local, private research institutions of Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, Helmholtzgemeinschaft, Leibniz Community, and the Max Planck Society. Termed the Berlin International Forum for Excellence, the initiative is intended to strengthen the competitiveness of the region's scientific assets in promising fields of research. To help put the size of the investment into perspective, Berlin had a population of 3.4 million in 2006. Science covered the announcement briefly at: http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2008/610/1 The original press release from Berlin's Science Senator and links to the memorandum of understanding among the institutions and government are available at: http://www.berlin.de/sen/bwf/presse/pressemitteilungen/anwendung/pressemitteilung.aspx?presseid=2395

The annual convention for the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) provides an opportunity each year for many attendees to announce new initiatives and reports in the field of life science research and bio-related TBED – sometimes blockbuster initiatives trying to create the most buzz during and after the event. For example, at this year’s recently concluded event in San Diego, with more than 20,000 attendees representing 48 states and 70 countries, Maryland and Massachusetts announced biotech initiatives topping the $1 billion mark (see the June 18, 2008 issue of the Digest).   Not all of the announcements were attached to expensive price tags. Some involved increased collaboration and cooperation to promote the research strengths of the collective members or to market the geographic area. Examples include:   On the research collaboration side, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ontario’s Premier Dalton McGuinty announced Canada’s injection of $100 million into a Canadian-California Cancer Stem Cell Consortium based in Toronto. The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the entity responsible for…

With the recent news that initial public offerings and mergers and acquisitions for venture-back companies are becoming scarce, many are anticipating a national venture capital crisis. A lack of exit opportunities could lead angel and venture investors to become more hesitant to invest at any stage of venture development as they seek opportunities that produce a return in the foreseeable future. In this sort of environment, it may be appropriate to examine how recent trends have effected early-stage investment around the country and which states have been successfully cultivating early-stage capital in a time when risk-averse investors increasingly have turned toward later-stage investments for short-term returns. Last week, SSTI analyzed the data on per capita venture capital dollars and deals at different stages of company development. Adjusting for population and focusing on seed- and early-stage capital revealed that several states, including Washington, the District of Columbia, Colorado, Maryland and Connecticut, are seeing impressive increases in capital opportunities for early-stage entrepreneurs, even though their achievements are often overshadowed by…