SSTI Digest

Bruce Johnson is the new Director of the Ohio Department of Development. Mr. Johnson formerly served in the Ohio Senate. 

Senate nomination hearings were held this week for John Marburger, President Bush's nominee for Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Phillip J. Bond, nominee for the position of Undersecretary of Technology for the Department of Commerce. 

Gov. Ronnie Musgrove is appointing Robert J. Rohrlack, Jr. as the new Director of the Mississippi Development Authority. Mr. Rohrlack is currently the Chief Executive for the Alliance for Economic Development in Gainesville, Florida. 

David Satterfield is the new Executive Director of the West Virginia Development Office. Mr. Satterfield was Gov. Bob Wise's chief of staff. 

The Information Technology Industry Council (ITIC) has announced that James Thurston has joined the ITIC team as Director of Technology Policy. Mr. Thurston has worked for NIST's Manufacturing Extension Partnership for several years. 

This week, 30 states were named recipients of the first Federal and State Technology Partnership (FAST) awards administered by the Small Business Association (SBA). The awards range from $100,000 to $150,000, totaling almost $3.5 million. FAST, included in December 2000 legislation reauthorizing the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program, provides matching funds to enable states to augment or expand their tech business assistance and SBIR outreach efforts. FAST winners and their respective award amounts are below:    Alabama — Alabama Dept. of Economic & Community Affairs (ACEDA) — $100,000  Alaska — Alaska Small Business Development Center — $100,000  Colorado — University of Colorado's Business Advancement Center — $100,000  Delaware — Delaware Small Business Dev. Center Network — $100,000  Georgia — Univ. of Georgia Small Business Dev. Center — $125,000  Hawaii — High Technology Dev. Corp. — $125,000  Iowa — Iowa State University's Center for Advanced Technology Dev. — $100,000  Louisiana — Louisiana Business & Technology Center, Louisiana State Univ. — $150,000  Maine — Maine Technology…

They may be separated by more than 6,000 miles, but tech-based economic development initiatives in Hawaii and Connecticut have adopted similar strategies to encourage the commercialization of alternative energy technologies: they're buying them.  Using the purchasing power of the public sector to affect change has been an effective tool in the past for socio-political projects ranging from helping topple the apartheid regime in South Africa to addressing environmental goals such as providing a large enough market for recycled paper products to warrant the substantial private investment needed in pulp mill construction and refurbishment.  Combining public purse strings with the need to demonstrate commercially unproven-yet-promising technologies such as all-electric cars and fuel cells, however, is a less commonly applied strategy. Public transportation projects, such as buses run on natural gas, provide perhaps the most widely known application of the concept.  An advantage to technology demonstration projects using public…

In a bid to make the South a knowledge economy leader, the Southern Growth Policies Board has released Invented Here: Transforming the Southern Economy, a 10-year strategic plan to create an innovation-driven economy in the South.  Southern Growth describes Invented Here as the "first of its kind in that not only does it lay out goals and objectives for an entire region, but it provides a mechanism for tracking the region's progress toward those goals."  Invented Here is built around three goals:  Increasing the perceived value of education in the South;  Harnessing the full potential of innovation; and   Creating and sustaining a quality of life that is attractive to globally competitive businesses and employees.  Each of the goals is supported by objectives and benchmarks that will be used to measure the states' and the region's progress. In all, 13 objectives and 74 benchmarks are identified.  Southern Technology Council and Southern Growth Policies Board staff will…

The New Economy Transition Team (NETT) of the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce has issued a 73-page plan that, if implemented successfully, could position Northern Kentucky as a center for life sciences and information technology, advanced manufacturing and financial services.  NETT, in coordination with Northern Kentucky Tri-County Economic Development Corp. (Tri-ED), Northern Kentucky University and Madison E-Zone (a technology incubator in Covington, Ky.), made the New Economy Plan public on August 2. The plan will be combined with others from Lexington, Louisville, and other regions of the state to become the New Economy Plan for the Commonwealth of Kentucky.  The plan contains four focus areas, including a series of initiatives in each area: 1.) expanding business clusters in life sciences, advanced manufacturing and information technology, 2.) nurturing new businesses, 3.) enhancing the infrastructure, and 4.) building a workforce for the future. Among the initiatives are:  The Northern Kentucky Chamber, Northern…

Alaska  The Prince of Wales Tribal Enterprise Consortium (POWTEC) is a high-tech reality today, thanks to the collaborative efforts of two tribal governments and a Bellevue, Wash., company, the Anchorage Daily News reported. Established by the Craig Community Association, the Organized Village of Kasaan and n-Link, POWTEC is an information technology company which supplies computer services to the federal government. Plans for the company include using federal set-asides for small, disadvantaged and tribally owned firms and maintaining a computer training center linked to the University of Alaska Southeast and the Northwest Indian College in Bellingham, Wash. A $600,000 federal rural development grant is helping fund the center.  Maine  The Loring Applied Technology Center became the second of seven technology centers scheduled to open across the state, according to the Bangor Daily News. The center was made possible due to $500,000 from the Legislature and a $400,000 grant from the federal Community Development Block Grant program.…

Many areas of the country are lamenting the workforce challenges presented by the out-migration of technically skilled college graduates, a “brain drain” for short. Two studies released during the past few days, however, provide positive data to the contrary for Michigan and the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania metro region. Michigan The Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) and the Presidents Council, State Universities of Michigan released a study showing the large majority of technically educated Michigan university students remain in the state after graduation. Tracking the patterns of approximately 30,000 high-tech sector graduates from 1997 through 2000, the researchers found Michigan retained 79 percent of graduates in the life sciences, information technology and engineering sectors who entered the workforce in high-tech positions. Even more positive for the state’s technology companies, 55 percent of students who moved to Michigan to attend a public university in these fields stayed in the state after graduation. The study…

Thirteen months ago, the General Accounting Office issued an unfavorable report on the licensing and royalty returns the National Institutes of Health (NIH) receive for commercialization of technologies resulting from federal funds (see: http://www.ssti.org/Digest/2000/081800.htm). As the Administration and Congress look to increase the NIH budget significantly again in 2002, the issue surfaces again. What level of direct financial return can be expected from the federal investment in life sciences research? To address Congressional demands to demonstrate a return on investments in research, NIH issued A Plan to Ensure Taxpayers' Interests are Protected this summer, declaring "its stewardship of the federal resources that support biomedical research has protected the taxpayers' interests." The NIH plan calls for little or no modification to the Institutes' existing efforts to capture royalties on federally-funded research. NIH concludes: "Current practices in technology transfer have yielded a dramatic…