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SSTI Digest
Billion Dollar Gift Boosts Biomed Research in Kansas City
With an eye toward helping to make Kansas City a leading center for biomedical research, James Stower Jr., founder of American Century mutual funds, and his wife are donating $1.114 billion to the Stowers Institute of Medical Research. The donation is considered one of the five largest philanthropic gifts in history. The Institute, opened last November after completion of the $200 million campus, is engaged in basic research toward long-term solutions for gene-based diseases such as cancer and diabetes.
Already employing four molecular biologists recruited from California, Utah, Texas and London, England, and their staff, the Stowers Institute plans to have more than 50 independent research programs when fully operational.
STTR Reauthorization Introduced
Calling for the program to more than triple in size by 2007, Senator John F Kerry (D-Massachusetts) and several other Senators introduced legislation last week to reauthorize and expand the Small Business Technology Transfer Program (STTR). STTR currently requires five federal agencies -- the National Science Foundation, NASA, and the departments of Defense, Health & Human Services, and Energy -- to award 0.15 percent of their extramural R&D budgets to research partnerships between small businesses and research institutions. If passed, the new bill would gradually increase the set-aside requirement to 0.5 percent by fiscal year 2007.
S. 856 also calls for reauthorizing STTR through fiscal year 2010 and increasing the size of Phase II awards from $500,000 to $750,000, the same level as awards in the much larger Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.
After its introduction, S. 856 was referred to the Senate Small Business Committee for consideration.
SBA Seeks Comments on SBIR Directive
In today's edition of the Federal Register, the Small Business Administration (SBA) has issued the draft revised policy directive for the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program. The public is invited to comment on the proposed directive, which provides guidance to the ten federal agencies participating in the program. SBIR annually awards more than $1 billion to small businesses across the country for research and development. Comments must be received by the SBA on or before June 18, 2001.
Legislation passed by Congress in December to reauthorize the SBIR program (Public Law 106-554) required SBA to prepare the first changes to the policy directive since 1993. While the SBIR Reauthorization Act did not include many substantive changes to the federal program, a quick review of the new policy directive reveals several proposed changes of potential interest to the tech-based economic development community.
Useful Stats: VC by State for 1st Quarter 2001
PricewaterhouseCoopers has published the detailed statistics for the Moneytree™ survey of venture capital (VC) activity for the first quarter of 2001. As promised in the May 4, 2001 issue of the SSTI Weekly Digest when the summary results were announced, SSTI has prepared the accompanying table presenting the distribution of VC by state.
Please note, the table includes only those states in which some VC activity was reported for the quarter. Several states fell out of the latest survey as fewer deals were reported across the country.
The complete detailed statistics can be found on the PricewaterhouseCoopers website: http://204.198.129.80/
Upcoming Conferences of Note
The following is a sampling of the more than 60 events included in the SSTI Calendar of Events webpage: http://www.ssti.org/calendar.htm
Webcast on 21st Century Agriculture R&D Priorities
On May 22 and May 23, the Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources of the National Research Council will hold a web-based workshop Opportunities in Agriculture: A Vision for USDA's Food and Agricultural Research in the 21st Century. Listen in free via live audio Webcast and submit questions to participants using an email form; both are accessible with an agenda and more information on the project's webpage, http://nationalacademies.org/banr/active_projects/agopps
People
President Bush intends to nominate P.H. Johnson to be Federal Co-chairperson of the Delta Regional Authority. He currently practices law with the firm of Johnson Bobo in Clarksdale, Mississippi.
Bill Shipp has been promoted to president and general manager of the Idaho National Engineering & Environmental Laboratory. Currently laboratory director, Shipp will take his new position August 1. Mr. Shipp also serves as Science & Technology Advisor to Idaho Governor Dirk Kempthorne.
Jackie Norton, director of the Arizona Department of Commerce for the past five years, has announced she will be leaving the position this summer.
Anita Balachandra, formerly in charge of the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Technology (EPSCoT) in the U.S. Department of Commerce, is now working with the Maryland Technology Development Corp.
People
President Bush intends to nominate P.H. Johnson to be Federal Co-chairperson of the Delta Regional Authority. He currently practices law with the firm of Johnson Bobo in Clarksdale, Mississippi.
People
Bill Shipp has been promoted to president and general manager of the Idaho National Engineering & Environmental Laboratory. Currently laboratory director, Shipp will take his new position August 1. Mr. Shipp also serves as Science & Technology Advisor to Idaho Governor Dirk Kempthorne.
People
Jackie Norton, director of the Arizona Department of Commerce for the past five years, has announced she will be leaving the position this summer.
People
Anita Balachandra, formerly in charge of the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Technology (EPSCoT) in the U.S. Department of Commerce, is now working with the Maryland Technology Development Corp.
People
SSTI welcomes Anulet Jones to our team as a Research Assistant. Ms. Jones has an engineering degree from Georgia Tech and is working on her MBA at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio.
Pennsylvania Works Toward $90 Million Life Sciences Initiative
Governor Tom Ridge’s $90 million plan to create a series of life science research/commercialization centers would be the largest, single technology initiative ever proposed in Pennsylvania, according to a recent press release from the Governor's office. The Life Sciences Greenhouse Initiative would be a network of innovation centers in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Harrisburg closely connected to university research activities. To be seeded with a $90 million investment from a one-time surplus of tobacco settlement funds, the centers would be sustained by grants from the ongoing settlement.
The initiative hopes to capitalize on increased private and federal research investment as well as the state's 30 percent growth in employment in life-sciences industries over the last five years -- double the rate of overall job growth in that same period. The Life Sciences Greenhouse network would be a university-industry-state partnership for research and commercialization of life science technologies.