SSTI Digest

Gov.-elect Bobby Jindal has appointed Stephen Moret as secretary of the Louisiana Department of Economic Development. Moret will assume his new post on Jan. 14, leaving behind his duties as president and CEO of the Baton Rouge Area Chamber of Commerce.

Mark Robinson resigned as chief operating officer of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council to join the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Steven Zylstra was appointed as vice president of global corporate communication and public relations for Mylan. Zylstra had been president and CEO of the Pittsburgh Technology Council and the Pittsburgh Biomedical Development Corp.

Listen or read the business news media and the dreaded “R” word, recession, is back in common parlance. State revenue cycles seem to feel it first. Already, with more than a dozen states projecting budget deficits for both current and coming fiscal years, it seems certain: Spending cuts in programs and services and/or tax increases are imminent. The nationwide housing market slump, the rising cost of energy and health care, and increased state spending are cited as a just a few of the reasons for shortfalls in state budgets. The lack of a fiscal year 2008 federal budget, now nearly one-quarter over, does not help state fiscal planning.  

Although Missouri frequently ranks in the top 20 states for federal research grants and academic R&D, the state consistently ranks much lower in the creation of new high-tech companies. A recent report by Dr. Mark Parry of the University of Missouri-Kansas City Bloch School of Business suggests that early-stage high-tech entrepreneurs and companies have been unable to secure sufficient capital to launch successful ventures. Part of this capital deficit has been due to a lack of state investment in capital formation and access programs, he contends. While neighboring states spent an average of $2.79 per resident in 2006 on capital formation initiatives and similar states such as Arizona, Ohio and Minnesota spent $2.94, Missouri spent only $0.10. Parry argues that this lack of spending has contributed to the state's persistent difficulty in translating its intellectual capital into new companies.  

Three major announcements were made in Singapore last month focusing on R&D of new technologies and educating the workforce to produce specialized graduates in upcoming fields.   Development plans for Asia’s first zero-energy building (ZEB) were released by the Parliamentary Secretary for National Development. The Building and Construction Authority (BCA) will retrofit an existing building that will both house classrooms and offices and serve as a testbed for green technology research. Slated for completion in 2009, the ZEB is expected to be 60 percent more energy efficient than an average commercial building. The building will create a highly efficient complex that produces as much energy as it consumes from renewable resources.  

One continuing challenge states and regions are attempting to overcome is adjusting their workforces in a rapidly changing, innovation-driven, global economy. The growing consensus emerging from many people examining science and technology competitiveness is that U.S. students need to be academically stronger in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields than they are today and that the supply of graduates with a science background needs to increase. This advice comes as other countries around the world, with populations large and small, pursue this same strategy to increase the quality and quantity of future workers with backgrounds in science and technology.   In response to this challenge, education policies and new initiatives at the federal, state and local levels are focusing on the preparation of students for careers in science and engineering (S&E) fields. However, a report released in October questions if enacting policies to increase the number of STEM students and improve the quality of students are the most efficient means to supply the S&E workforce.

Nearly 700 new products resulting from university research handled by technology transfer offices reached the marketplace in FY 2006, according to the latest Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) Survey of U.S. Licensing Activity released this week.   The 189 research performing institutions that participated in the survey also reported the creation of 553 start-ups during the year and almost 5,000 new licensing relationships with companies.   The AUTM survey provides core data for most of the empirical analysis of university tech transfer efforts. As such, it has drawn criticism in the past for what is not measured – a common complaint for measuring the impact of nearly all research and economic activity. For instance, the National Science Foundation continues to invest considerable staff time and financial resources into developing better measures of an innovation-based economy.  

During the past year, the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program has garnered a great deal of attention, setting the stage for a national debate over potential changes to the well known federal program – namely the issue of participation from companies with venture-capital backing. With congressional reauthorization on the horizon for next year, SSTI examined the SBIR program in-depth during a breakout session at the annual conference in October, looking at both current status and future developments. Compiling award and proposal statistics by state for fiscal year 2006, SSTI finds the 10 states with the most awards in FY 2006 were California (725), Massachusetts (466), Virginia (221), Texas (176), Colorado (173), Maryland (169), Ohio (167), New York (163), Pennsylvania (133) and Washington (91). Compared to the top states for FY05, little changed other than Texas, Colorado and Maryland switching around fourth through sixth places and Washington edging out Michigan for the 10th slot.  

A complete description of this opportunity and others is available at http://www.ssti.org/posting.htm. Griffin Analytical Technologies, a high-tech, high-growth chemical detection company focused on identifying chemical warfare agents and explosives and environmental monitoring applications, is seeking someone for the position of research scientist. This position is responsible, in part, for performing R&D in the chemical, explosives and bio detection areas and helping to identify funding opportunities. A Ph.D. or M.S. degree in chemistry is preferred; a B.S. degree with five-plus years of experience will be considered.

Edison had Menlo Park. Monet had the gardens at Giverny. Ubiquitous computing had PARC. To what extent were the great things that happened at each of these localities influenced by the places themselves?    Reducing that question to economic development policy terms: Can the places of great creations be created by design?   In this issue of the SSTI Weekly Digest, we examine how the design and planning of physical space can influence scientific discovery, individuals and research groups, and the performance of technology-based economic development (TBED) organizations. We combine concepts from many fields – including architecture, urban planning and, of course, economic development – to present various perspectives that may be of interest to the TBED community.  

Building structures that contain laboratory space are becoming an important component of many entities pursuing TBED strategies. Research spaces such as cleanrooms and wetlabs pop up throughout universities, but they also are being constructed within research parks and business incubators.   As the limits of our scientific knowledge continually expand, does the design of buildings housing these laboratories need to evolve as well? New technologies require understanding and input across multiple disciplines. Reductionism as the preferred approach for scientific discovery is giving way toward the convergence of knowledge across fields, or "consilience" as E.O. Wilson and others have called it. Perhaps the way to orient the physical environment around researchers can be configured such that U.S. innovators become more innovative.