SSTI Digest

Joe May, president of Colorado's community college system, announced his retirement, effective in February.

The Greater Antelope Valley Economic Alliance has appointed Tony Moon as its new president.

Robert Olsen, the director of the Fitzsimons Redevelopment Authority, will become the head of the Economic Development Administration's regional office in Denver.

Robert Pozen, secretary of economic development for Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, announced his resignation, effective at the end of 2003.

The Michigan Economic Development Corporation has named Sandy Ring to the new position of vice president for economic development policy.

Kelvin Simmons is the new director of the Missouri Department of Economic Development, replacing Joe Driskell who held the position for 10 years. Simmons had been serving as chairman of the state's Public Service Commission.

Leroy Williams has been named as the new technology secretary for the state of Colorado. Williams, previously the state's chief information officer, will manage the Governor's Office of Innovation and Technology.

The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation awarded on Monday $25 million in grants to eight U.S. universities that pledged to make entrepreneurship education available across campus. The selected universities, shown with their award amounts, are:

A collaborative agreement formed Tuesday between AT&T and the Southeastern Universities Research Association (SURA) is expected to speed the creation of regional and national grid services. SURA, a nonprofit organization, is comprised of more than 60 leading research institutions in the southern U.S. and the District of Columbia.

Under the partnership, researchers and academia will have access to Grid networking — AT&T's newest national network infrastructure for experimental work on new networking technology and applications. The telecommunications company will make available, at no cost to SURA, 8,000 miles of dark fiber network and a substantial inventory of optical networking equipment. These assets will be used to develop experimental network services to support advanced research that would not be possible otherwise.

New grants totaling more than $28.5 million will help foster the development of new products and markets for agriculturally based products, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced last week. In all, 184 value-added agricultural product market development grants were distributed across 40 states.

Twenty-nine of the selected applications – a total of $4.3 million in grants – will focus on biomass and renewable energy. For example, Central Illinois Energy Cooperative will utilize $250,000 to assist with the construction of a 30-million-gallon-per-year ethanol processing and co-generation facility.

A new energy initiative in West Virginia, Energy Village, aims to help grow the state's small and start-up energy and environmental technology businesses. Gov. Bob Wise announced $125,000 in funding for the initiative on Monday.

Energy Village is tasked with coordinating West Virginia’s emerging energy and environmental technology cluster of businesses. The funding provided to the Morgantown-based nonprofit organization will assist in the implementation of a strategic plan to grow these businesses. Energy Village will leverage state and federal resources, including the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory, in the research and development of fossil fuel technologies.

To promote biotech in Baton Rouge, a new study sponsored by Capital Region Competitive Strategy (CapStrategy) recommends constructing an "idea pipeline" to better commercialize the intellectual property and research generated in the region's universities, hospitals and research institutes. CapStrategy, a nonprofit, cluster-based economic development initiative, operates under the Chamber of Greater Baton Rouge and represents nine parishes in the region.