SSTI Digest

The National Science Foundation has released Federal Funds for Research and Development: Fiscal Years 1999, 2000, and 2001, Vol. 49, presenting 111 detailed statistical tables.  Tables 56-79 characterize federal R&D and R&D plant obligations at universities & colleges by basic versus applied research, by agency and by field of science for 1999, 2000 and 2001. Tables 82-87 present the 1999 data by geographic distribution (by state). This data can be standardized by population for interpretation.  To present a different, perhaps more meaningful, perspective on the distribution across states, SSTI has prepared a table which provides the 1999 federal R&D and R&D plant obligations as an average per employed doctoral scientist and engineer in the state. The untested hypothesis is that R&D obligations would be a function more of the availability of an appropriately skilled labor pool to conduct research, rather than the total population.  The table presents per capita federal R&D obligations by…

George Atkinson is taking a year-long leave of absence from his position as a professor in chemistry and optical sciences at the University of Arizona to serve as the first American Institute of Physics science fellow at the U.S. State Department.  Margie Emmermann has been named Director of the Arizona Department of Commerce. For the past seven years, Ms. Emmermann has been the state's policy adviser to Mexico and liaison to the Hispanic Community.  The National Science Foundation has named Judith A. Ramaley as the Foundation's new Assistant Director for Education and Human Resources (EHR). A biologist, Dr. Ramaley served most recently as president of the University of Vermont.  New Technology Week reports William Schneider, president of International Planning Services, has been picked to chair the Defense Science Board.  Dennis J. Sysko is serving as interim president of the Anne Arundel County High Technology Council, following the resignation of president John G. Rice. Mr…

George Atkinson is taking a year-long leave of absence from his position as a professor in chemistry and optical sciences at the University of Arizona to serve as the first American Institute of Physics science fellow at the U.S. State Department.&nbsp

Margie Emmermann has been named Director of the Arizona Department of Commerce. For the past seven years, Ms. Emmermann has been the state's policy adviser to Mexico and liaison to the Hispanic Community.&nbsp

The National Science Foundation has named Judith A. Ramaley as the Foundation's new Assistant Director for Education and Human Resources (EHR). A biologist, Dr. Ramaley served most recently as president of the University of Vermont. 

New Technology Week reports William Schneider, president of International Planning Services, has been picked to chair the Defense Science Board.&nbsp

Dennis J. Sysko is serving as interim president of the Anne Arundel County High Technology Council, following the resignation of president John G. Rice. Mr. Sysko, who is currently serving as the group's treasurer, will perform both roles until a replacement president is elected in January.

The Office of Technology Transfer in the National Institutes of Health has published abstracts of eight government-owned patents that are available for licensing. To help bring these commercialization opportunities to the attention of a wider audience, SSTI has reprinted the abstracts on the following webpage: http://www.ssti.org/Digest/Tables/072001t2.htm

At the end of June, Governor Bob Holden signed an executive order committing $21.5 million of the state’s tobacco settlement funds for biotech research during fiscal year 2002. Governor Holden made his announcement prior to signing Senate Bill 500, which expands the state’s job training program to prepare Missouri’s work force for new careers in life sciences. Although the General Assembly this year appropriated $21.5 million in tobacco settlement funds for life sciences research and development, no legislation was enacted to govern the expenditure of the money. The executive order will direct the State Office of Administration to administer the funds through the Life Sciences Research Committee, composed of the commissioner of administration, and seven other members appointed by the governor. The committee will solicit and review biotechnology research proposals, and funds will be disbursed through research contracts for proposals that have the potential to provide the greatest health and economic benefits to Missourians. Funds earmarked for the life…

While cities such as Boston and San Francisco, not surprisingly, are home to many high-growth companies, a recent report from the National Commission on Entrepreneurship (NCOE) reveals large concentrations of high-growth companies in less familiar areas such as Elkhart, IN, and Provo, UT. High Growth Companies: Mapping America’s Entrepreneurial Landscape provides a detailed picture of the regions where businesses have shown rapid growth. The report was released July 11 as a starting point for understanding the economic development in the nation’s 394 Labor Market Areas (LMAs), as designated by the U.S. Departments of Labor and Agriculture. The key findings of the report include: High-growth companies — those with 15 percent employment growth per year for 5 years, or a doubling in employment between 1992 and 1997 — are found in all regions of the U.S. and all industrial sectors. Fewer than 1 in 20 U.S. businesses achieved the designation as a high-growth rate company. Each of the 394 LMA regions in the country contains some high-growth…

The William and Phyllis Mack Center for Technological Innovation was founded last month at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. The center is the product of a $10 million gift from William L. Mack, the president and senior managing partner of the Mack Organization — a national owner, investor and developer of warehouse facilities. The center serves to house all of Wharton's technology management initiatives, including Wharton faculty members' research and publishing activities, an endowed professorship and a student-run conference. The Mack Professorship honors a senior faculty member whose primary commitment is to teaching and research in technological innovation management. The center also includes the Mack Program in Technological Innovation, which encompasses the Wharton Emerging Technologies Management Research Program, a corporate learning network for senior executives and academic researchers guided by senior Wharton faculty members and staff. Senior executives from numerous industry partners are helping to schedule activities for…

Aggregated venture capital investments are commonly used by state and local policymakers to assess the “health” of their tech-based economies. As a result, some of the most accessed pages of the SSTI Weekly Digest web archives have been the state-by-state tables SSTI generates with the release of each quarter’s Moneytree™ venture capital survey results. The merger of the PricewaterhouseCoopers and Venture One surveys late last year into a single Moneytree™ survey, however, made long-term analysis inaccurate, if not impossible, for practitioners and researchers alike. Fortunately, the National Association of Seed and Venture Funds sought a solution to the problem from PricewaterhouseCoopers/Venture One. The results, two charts presenting annual seed and first round venture capital investments by state for 1995-2000, are posted in the NASVF NetNews web library. The first article <http://www.nasvf.org/web/allpress.nsf/pages/2833> provides six-year aggregate data and each state’s share of the total number of deals and funding. The second article <…