Last year, nearly 17 million international passengers passed through Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). Many of those passengers were businesspeople who rely on convenient access to international flights to keep their companies in touch with partners, customers, divisions and markets all over the world. International flights out of LAX have played a key role in positioning the Los Angeles region as the largest manufacturing center in the U.S. and as a national high-tech leader.

It won’t come to any surprise to Digest readers that there’s a connection between universities and economic prosperity. In addition to educating students and advancing science and technological innovation, the localized economic impact of institutions, alone, provides a buffer to economic swings for many mid-sized and smaller cities and college towns. How best to incorporate universities into regional tech-based economic development strategies without compromising core missions is an art not every community has mastered.

According to the latest stats on venture capital investments, half of all U.S. VC investment during the last quarter of 2006 supported companies in two small areas of the country: Silicon Valley and New England (primarily the Boston metro area). With the exception of only a handful of other large metro areas and, since the origin of the modern venture capital industry some 25 years ago, most other cities have struggled to attract the attention of venture capitalists.

It is the opening day of AUTM’s 2007 annual conference in San Francisco, the largest gathering ever of individuals from around the world interested in university technology transfer.

A gala held last weekend at Google headquarters in California officially kicked off a $50 million fundraising campaign for the X Prize Foundation, which provides funds for the development of new prizes. The prizes are designed to support breakthroughs for specific challenges in medicine, energy production and consumption, education, and transportation.

In his recent combined State of the State and budget address on March 7, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich proposed the formation of the Illinois Community Assets Fund (ICAF), a $100 million venture designed to increase access to capital and financing to economically distressed communities and populations that have had inadequate access to mainstream capital markets within the state. The assets of ICAF would be contained within the State Treasury, and the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO) would administer the fund.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has announced that his proposed budget for 2007-08 will include a $95 million initiative to support new and existing facilities for high-tech research. The California Research and Innovation Initiative would provide funding to several university-based projects around the state hosting clean energy, biotechnology, and nanotechnology research and commercialization activities. Gov.

Gov. Matt Blunt appointed Greg Steinhoff to head the Missouri State Department of Economic Development.