SSTI Digest

Kentucky Governor Paul E. Patton is the new chairman of the National Governors' Association. Idaho Governor Dirk Kempthorne was named vice chairman. Patton has identified education as his highest priority while serving the one-year term as chairman.

Angie Dvorak is leaving her position as CEO of the Mississippi Technology Alliance to become vice president of research for the University of Southern Mississippi. The University saw a 25 percent increase in research funds last fiscal year, climbing to a record $62.6 million.

Joe Raguso has left the California Technology, Trade and Commerce Agency to become vice president for strategic and corporate partnerships for SRI International. Raguso served the agency as Deputy Secretary for the Division of Science, Technology and Innovation.

Keith Servis has left his position as director of programs at the New York Office of Science, Technology, and the Advancement of Research to return to the New York Department of Health.

Thomas Still has been selected at the new president of the Wisconsin Technology Council. Still, currently associate editor of the Wisconsin State Journal, will fill the vacancy created by Larry Kline's departure this past spring.

Patrick Tam started this week as the new executive director of SIRTI, the Spokane Intercollegiate Research and Technology Institute. Tam comes to SIRTI from a Seattle-based international technology transfer company.

Robert Templin, Jr., has been named the new president of Northern Virginia Community College, effective August 17. Templin, currently a senior fellow at the Morino Institute, was a previous president of Virginia' Center for Innovative Technology.

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Last week, Governor Don Siegelman signed Executive Order Number 71, which establishes the Alabama Research Alliance, a partnership among Alabama’s research universities, the business community and state government. The mission of the research alliance is to foster economic development in Alabama by investing in existing and new research initiatives at Alabama’s research universities. The research alliance will focus on investing in and promoting research in areas including, but not limited to: space, science, technology and defense; automotive manufacturing and production design; agriculture; biomedicine and cancer research; and aviation computer electronics. The new Executive Order amends a 1999 Executive Order by Gov. Seigelman by changing the name from the Alabama Research Institute (ARI) to the Alabama Research Alliance and by expanding the Board of Directors. The board will consist of 13 members, including the governor, who will serve as chairman, the chancellor of the University of Alabama System, the presidents of Auburn University, the University of South Alabama,…

The Georgia Research Alliance (GRA) is facilitating the expansion of VentureLab at the state’s research universities. Piloted at the Georgia Institute of Technology, VentureLab is a strategy for enhancing and accelerating the process of spinning new technology-based enterprises out of university research. GRA President C. Michael Cassidy defined the goals of VentureLab as providing earlier and increased awareness by the business and investment community of university commercialization opportunities and providing an easier and more efficient process for turning these technologies into new companies or new markets for established companies. “Through VentureLab, we will be able to combine a number of existing programs with new strategies that streamline the commercialization process. The ultimate goal is to maximize the return on the state’s investment in university research,” Cassidy said. In the pilot program, consultants and Venture Fellows worked with 75 faculty, identifying 20 projects with commercial potential. From the 20, five startup opportunities are being…

The California Technology, Trade and Commerce Agency (TTCA) has released A County Level Analysis of California's R&D Activity 1993-1999, which, for the first time, offers California state and regional policymakers a county-by-county, instead of statewide or national, analysis of research and development trends. The Analysis identifies $50.24 billion that California institutions secured in federal research support between the years 1993-99 (the latest data available). The Analysis includes unclassified research funding from 17 federal agencies on a county-by-county basis and details who performs the research including individual business, public and private educational institutions, federal government, nonprofit institutions, and state or local government. Several interesting characteristics of the R&D landscape of California in the 1990s were identified and where the landscape may head into the future. Fifty-eight percent of the federally funded research in California was conducted by individual businesses, and 41 percent was conducted by universities and independent research…

The AEA's sixth annual survey of employment in the electronics and information technology sectors revealed 20 states experienced more IT job losses than creations in 2001. Texas led the way with more than 3,000 job losses while South Dakota experienced the greatest percentage loss of its IT workforce at 14 percent. Nationally, only 80,000 jobs were added in the year, compared with 440,000 in 2000. On the positive side, California, Kansas, Virginia, Oregon and New Jersey added the greatest number of technology jobs during 2001. Cyberstates 2002: A State-by-State Overview of the High-Technology Industry is available for $195 through http://www.aeanet.org. Press releases on the individual findings for many states are available for free download on the site.