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The Washington Technology Center (WTC) is seeking an Executive Director. WTC is the state of Washington's enterprise for joint industry-university technology development partnerships. The Center supports technologies for industry application for Washington companies in the areas of advanced materials and manufacturing, biotechnology/biomedical devices, computer systems and microelectronics.

On Monday, the Clinton Administration released its detailed budget proposal for FY99 that requests a 2.57% increase in research and development funding. The FY99 budget proposal calls for increasing spending on R&D to roughly $78.16 billion, up $1.96 billion from FY98.

The Clinton Administration has announced initiatives to finance computer training and retraining programs to meet the dramatically increasing demand for Information Technology (IT) workers. The announcement occurred at the National Information Technology Workforce Convocation, an event to facilitate broad-based solutions to the worker shortage.

The United States could be on the verge of a major resurgence in the funding of research and development (R&D), according to the annual forecast by Battelle Memorial Institute and R&D Magazine. R&D spending in 1998 is expected to reach more than $215 billion, a 4.66 percent increase over the $206 billion that the National Science Foundation estimates was spent in 1997. The prediction comes after years of stagnation in R&D spending.

The Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC), in partnership with several public and private organizations, has outlined a plan to address telecommunications infrastructure needs across the state.



LinkMichigan, released last week, addresses several telecommunications infrastructure issues or concerns that were increasingly facing the public and private sector, including:

With so much attention given to increasing private seed and venture capital activity as a means of growing tech-based economies, one might expect that encouraging and attracting community development venture capital (CDVC) – that is, equity investments and entrepreneurial assistance to meet both profit targets and community development goals – would be a common element of a state or local community’s portfolio of economic development tools.

San Jose, Austin, and San Francisco received top honors in the 3rd Annual Forbes-Milken Institute Best Places Ranking. San Jose and San Francisco raced to the top of the list from 29th and 42th place respectively in 1999. Completing the top ten metro areas in 2000 are: Boulder, CO; Dallas, TX; Santa Rosa, CA; Boise City, ID; San Diego, CA; Phoenix-Mesa, AZ; and Oakland, CA. The top metro area east of the Mississippi River, Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, NC, came in 13th.

Colorado

With an overall positive review, the Office of the Inspector General within the National Science Foundation (NSF) has made several recommendations for improving the performance of NSF's Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). EPSCoR plays an important and strategic role in many states’ efforts to build a stronger research enterprise and tech-based economy. In FY 2000, the NSF EPSCoR program distributed $51.7 million to 19 states and Puerto Rico.

Ever wonder how many SSTI Weekly Digest articles have covered tax credits? (Answer is 47) strategic plans? (35), biotechnology? (80), workforce issues?(92), indicators? (14), telecommunications? (77), math & science? (50), capital, both seed and venture? (150)



To help make your research efforts easier, SSTI has restored the search feature for our website: http://ssti.org.master.com  Feedback from users would be appreciated.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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

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.

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.