SSTI Digest

Effective in May, Ken Janoski will be the president and CEO of BioGenerator, a nonprofit in St. Louis that helps scientists commercialize their discoveries.

Medical Alley and MNBIO, two organizations that merged in 2005 to promote medical sciences in Minnesota, have changed their name LifeScience Alley.

The Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development appointed Christine Plater as its new director of small business programs.

The South Dakota Biotech Industry Association, a new resource for biotech companies in the state, has formed.

The on/off binary fundamental of information and communication technology (ICT) could just as well describe the U.S. position in the field. For the third time in five years, the U.S. leads all nations on the Networked Readiness Index (NRI) contained in the World Economic Forum's Global Information Technology Report 2005-2006. Expanded to track 115 economies worldwide in its fifth edition, the new Global Information Technology Report assesses the impact of ICT on the development process and the competitiveness of nations. The NRI measures the propensity for countries to leverage the opportunities offered by ICT for development and increased competitiveness. It also establishes a broad international framework mapping out the enabling factors of such capacity. The U.S. regained the top position in the rankings after falling to fifth place a year ago. According to the index, America's 2005-06 surge in the ranking reflects impressive performance in the areas of ICT physical infrastructure, a broadly supportive market environment, and high levels of business and government usage of the latest technologies…

African-American and Hispanic students begin college interested in majoring in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields at rates similar to those of white and Asian-American students and persist in these fields through their third year of study, but do not earn their bachelor’s degrees at the same rate as their peers, according to a new analysis conducted by the American Council on Education (ACE). Increasing the Success of Minority Students in Science and Technology also finds that the majority of the African-American and Hispanic students majoring in STEM fields who persisted beyond the third year did not drop out, but were still enrolled and working toward a degree after six years. The report relies on data from a longitudinal study conducted by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, which tracked 12,000 undergraduates who entered college in the fall of 1995. ACE's analysis found that in the 1995-96 academic year 18.6 percent of African-American students and 22.7 percent of Hispanic students began college interested in majoring in…

The advances being made in nanotechnology-based research are likely to impact most industry sectors eventually as more commercial applications are identified. As a result, the National Nanotechnology Initiative has been a research priority for the federal government for many years. Nanotech research is occurring around the world, but, at this point, the majority of effort is concentrated in several leading universities and private companies. A new report by the Southern Growth Policies Board (Southern) reveals the South, while performing about 20 percent of all nanotechnology research activity in the U.S., would benefit greatly through a formalized regional nanotechnology network. Connecting the Dots: Creating a Southern Nanotechnology Network maps the South's assets in nanotechnology and provides recommendations for establishing the South as a leader in the emerging industry. Drawing from data for all of the Southern member states (Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and the…

Gov. Dirk Kempthorne recently received some good news about his future when President Bush nominated him to serve as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Interior. The news was not as rosy on the home front for Idaho's economic future, however, as the state legislature in late March rejected the governor's plans for Idaho to take a more proactive role toward building a tech-based economy. Funding for key science and technology programs included in Gov. Dirk Kempthorne's fiscal year 2007 budget request was rejected by the legislature last month as lawmakers considered how to disburse a $214 million surplus. The governor announced during his state-of-the-state address he would recommend the full request of the Science and Technology Advisory Council for the state's TechConnect program and increased funding for university research and technology transfer. For the second year in a row, the legislature denied the governor's request of $300,000 to supplement the state's TechConnect centers. The three centers assist entrepreneurs and technology businesses in their regions and connect…

Just as bread won't rise without yeast, the key knowledge-building ingredients for many state tech-based economic development strategies - increasing investments in university-based research, emphasizing workforce development and science and math education, and identifying clusters of co-located firms in related industry sectors - won't lead to the spillovers of knowledge critical to sustaining growth without an active reagent. The new discussion paper from the London-based Centre for Economic Policy Research, Growth & Entrepreneurship: An Empirical Assessment, by authors Zoltan Acs, David Audretsch, Pontus Braunerhjelm and Bo Carlsson concludes that technology-based entrepreneurship serves as that reagent. Using a time-series panel of entrepreneurship data for 18 countries in their model, Acs, et al. found that changes in entrepreneurship rates have a positive impact on changes in economic growth, regardless of time (1980s or 1990s). Changes in R&D expenditures as a percentage of gross domestic product, however, were found to have a positive impact on changes in economic growth only…

Using statistics from the National Science Foundation’s report Science & Engineering Indicators 2006, SSTI has prepared a table presenting 2003 state rankings for industrial R&D intensity - the ratio of industry R&D to gross state product (GSP). The national average in industrial R&D intensity for 2003 was 1.81 percent. Among the fourteen states that placed above the national average, Michigan held the highest rank at 4.24 percent followed by Washington (3.76 percent), Massachusetts (3.73 percent), Connecticut (3.35 percent) and California (3.28 percent). Conversely, Alaska ranked the lowest in the nation at 0.11 percent, with South Dakota (0.27 percent), Montana (0.25 percent), Louisiana (0.20 percent), and Wyoming (0.17 percent) rounding off the final five. The table is available at: http://www.ssti.org/Digest/Tables/040306t.htm Science and Engineering Indicators 2006 is available at: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind06/

Innovation Philadelphia, a nonprofit public-private partnership dedicated to growing the wealth and the workforce of the Greater Philadelphia Region, is seeking a full-time manager of marketing and communications to start immediately. Some of the responsibilities include coordinating a multi-faceted marketing department, publishing a weekly electronic newsletter, vendor management for all marketing programs, marketing management of internal departments programs, and website management. Among other skills, the successful candidate will have an undergraduate degree from an accredited university, at least three or more years of experience in a marketing-related field, and an understanding of the Greater Philadelphia Region. A more complete description of this position opening is available through the SSTI Job Corner: http://www.ssti.org/posting.htm

Dennis Cheek is vice president of education with the Kauffman Foundation. Dr. Donald Daniel is the new CEO of the University of Tennessee Space Institute. William Harris is the new president and CEO of Science Foundation Arizona, a recently formed nonprofit organization. Matt Kramer stepped down from the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) to become vice president of sales and marketing with a Plymouth health care provider. Kramer served three years with DEED. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute named Nag Patibandla as director of the Center for Future Energy Systems, a New York State Center for Advanced Technology. The State of Maryland has created a new Small Business Programs unit as part of the Governor's Office of Business Advocacy and Small Business Assistance. Team NEO appointed Thomas Waltermire as CEO of the organization, a private sector-led economic development organization that helps to grow companies in Northeast Ohio. Janice Whitehouse was named president of…