In the December 19, 2003 Issue:

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$25M in Kauffman Grants to Spur Entrepreneurship on Eight Campuses
The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation awarded on Monday $25 million in grants to eight U.S. universities that pledged to make entrepreneurship education available across campus. The selected universities, shown with their award amounts, are:

Because schools must match the grants at least two-to-one, the Kauffman Campuses initiative ultimately directs a minimum of $75 million for the creation of new interdisciplinary entrepreneurship education programs in American higher education. The initiative is believed to be the first such program of its kind.

While entrepreneurship programs traditionally have been the domain of the business school, the eight Kauffman Campuses schools propose to create campus-wide entrepreneurial experiences that could affect hundreds of thousands of students. Plans vary widely including: developing an entrepreneurship minor available to all undergraduate students; housing student entrepreneurs together; developing and training dozens of faculty to teach entrepreneurship; and, creating student-run businesses on campus.

The eight schools were selected by a panel of judges from 15 finalist schools that participated in the six-month Kauffman Campuses competition. In June, each of 15 finalist schools were awarded a $50,000 planning grant by the Kauffman Foundation to develop and submit an innovative, comprehensive five-year plan to inject entrepreneurship training and experiences into the fabric of the university. Additionally, the university president or chancellor from each of the 15 schools led their teams in presenting their plans to judges at the Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City between Dec. 9 and 11.

The Kauffman Campuses initiative grew out of the foundation's 10-year history of advancing entrepreneurship, which has included substantial support of entrepreneurship education efforts at hundreds of U.S. colleges and universities. Additional background on all eight grant recipients is available at: http://www.emkf.org/pages/397.cfm

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AT&T, SURA Partnership Will Advance Grid Networking Infrastructure
A collaborative agreement formed Tuesday between AT&T and the Southeastern Universities Research Association (SURA) is expected to speed the creation of regional and national grid services. SURA, a nonprofit organization, is comprised of more than 60 leading research institutions in the southern U.S. and the District of Columbia.

Under the partnership, researchers and academia will have access to Grid networking — AT&T's newest national network infrastructure for experimental work on new networking technology and applications. The telecommunications company will make available, at no cost to SURA, 8,000 miles of dark fiber network and a substantial inventory of optical networking equipment. These assets will be used to develop experimental network services to support advanced research that would not be possible otherwise.

AT&T also will lease to SURA and its partners additional network facilities and capacity as needed. The company will make its network assets available through USAWaves, a research and education (R&E) networking initiative created by SURA.

Grid networking, by definition, enables computing facilities, scientific data repositories and applications to be shared. As a result, researchers are able to more rapidly solve complex problems, conduct computer-intensive research or analyze vast amounts of data. For example, advances in the areas of database mining, particle detectors, telescope observatories, electron microscopes and technical testing devices are all being networked, allowing data to be shared, managed and accessed.

AT&T's partnership with SURA will help advance many regional initiatives requiring advanced network infrastructure and services. Several R&E optical networking initiatives are underway in Virginia, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma. The Southern Governors' Association (SGA) also is pursuing several projects that may benefit from the agreement. SURA has been working with SGA to define and develop strategies for implementing its projects.

A SURA-sponsored study of potential corporate partners interested in developing new network services to strengthen education and scientific research in the South led to the partnership with AT&T. A full announcement on the collaborative agreement is available at http://www.sura.org/.

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USDA Awards $28.5M in Rural Development Grants
New grants totaling more than $28.5 million will help foster the development of new products and markets for agriculturally based products, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced last week. In all, 184 value-added agricultural product market development grants were distributed across 40 states.

Twenty-nine of the selected applications – a total of $4.3 million in grants – will focus on biomass and renewable energy. For example, Central Illinois Energy Cooperative will utilize $250,000 to assist with the construction of a 30-million-gallon-per-year ethanol processing and co-generation facility.

Authorized as part of the 2002 Farm Bill, the Value-Added Agricultural Product Market Development Grants program provides an opportunity to refine agricultural commodities and products to increase their value in the marketplace. Applications selected for funding range from Arkansas-based Planters Cotton Oil Mill, Inc., which will develop a feasibility analysis and business plan for marketing and manufacturing of an oilseed processing product, to Massachusetts Woodlands Cooperative, LLC to expand markets that focus on forest stewardship, green certified materials and other value-added forest products.

Funding of selected applicants will be contingent upon meeting the conditions of the grant agreement. A complete list of the selected grant recipients is available through the USDA Rural Development website: http://www.rurdev.usda.gov. In addition, SSTI has prepared a table showing a state-by-state breakdown of awards: http://www.ssti.org/Digest/Tables/121903t.htm

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West Virginia's Energy Village is Friendly to Small Start-up Companies
A new energy initiative in West Virginia, Energy Village, aims to help grow the state's small and start-up energy and environmental technology businesses. Gov. Bob Wise announced $125,000 in funding for the initiative on Monday.

Energy Village is tasked with coordinating West Virginia’s emerging energy and environmental technology cluster of businesses. The funding provided to the Morgantown-based nonprofit organization will assist in the implementation of a strategic plan to grow these businesses. Energy Village will leverage state and federal resources, including the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory, in the research and development of fossil fuel technologies.

“This expertise can provide a key foundation to our efforts to grow new opportunities for the state in the energy sector,” Gov. Wise said. “We already are a leader in the production of coal and other natural resources; we also could become a leader in growing new businesses that allow these resources to be used in a cleaner and more efficient manner.”

Energy Village was developed as an outgrowth of the Energy Task Force created in 2001 by Gov. Wise, which has produced a 20-year energy roadmap for the state. The task force is comprised of 41 members representing a broad range of groups throughout West Virginia. More information is available at: http://www.state.wv.us/governor/IssuesEnergy.htm

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Biotech in the Future for Baton Rouge?
To promote biotech in Baton Rouge, a new study sponsored by Capital Region Competitive Strategy (CapStrategy) recommends constructing an "idea pipeline" to better commercialize the intellectual property and research generated in the region's universities, hospitals and research institutes. CapStrategy, a nonprofit, cluster-based economic development initiative, operates under the Chamber of Greater Baton Rouge and represents nine parishes in the region.

CapStrategy's two-month study discusses the region's existing assets and potential commercialization opportunities, while reviewing the gaps to be closed for Baton Rouge to emerge as a leading region for biotech. Four stages to cluster economic development – mobilize, analyze, catalyze and realize – ultimately shape the region's ability to build on its strengths, the study observes. Among those strengths are several applied research centers that could enable rapid commercialization in such areas as agricultural science, food processing technology and nutrition.

The study notes the region's biomedical-related industry is still at a fledgling stage, however. To overcome this stage, it suggests Baton Rouge undertake "a significant, sustained public- and private-sector focus, investment in additional infrastructure, technical and management expertise, and fostering a collaborative environment among the many assets in the region such as research institutions, hospitals and treatment centers, the business community, and in particular the universities."

CapStrategy, the authors state, should work toward creating a Center for Nutritional Science and Technology to attract outside investment and spur job growth. A consortium aided by development teams could oversee the center. Meanwhile, the center would capitalize on commercialization opportunities in emerging technologies such as transgenics, regenerative medicine, nanotechnology and bio-information technology.

Gaps remaining for Baton Rouge and the capital region also must be filled, the authors contend. The study recommends facilitating a detailed inventory of intellectual property among the region's research institutions, including CAM-D, the Louisiana State University (LSU) AgCenter, LSU's Pennington Biomedical Research Center, and Southern University. Similarly, to encourage investment in biomedical infrastructure and services, the region should develop a branding campaign, support an expanded biomaterials industry, and create a centralized database of out-of-state management and scientific talent with Louisiana backgrounds.

CapStrategy's study is available at: http://www.capstrategy.com/

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Report Sheds Light on Role of Tech Transfer, Commercialization in ED
A new report prepared for the U.S. Economic Development Administration aims to provide public officials, development practitioners and researchers with a greater understanding of the relationship between the creation and commercialization of technologies and regional economic development. Technology Transfer and Commercialization: Their Role in Economic Development begins by outlining the causes and effects of the restructuring of the U.S. economy that necessitates technology-focused development strategies. For readers without a technology background, the report defines and describes a typology of technology transfer and commercialization activities.

Technology Transfer and Commercialization also seeks to aid a realistic assessment of the potential for technology-based development in various regions across the U.S. Where does technology development and commercialization activity take place in the U.S. and why? Are rural areas and smaller metro areas as likely to be sites for technology development and commercialization activity as larger metro areas? How important is the presence of public research and development (R&D) – carried out at universities, nonprofit research institutes and federal laboratories – for technology-based development? In answering these questions, the report examines and publishes data for all 318 U.S. metropolitan areas, carrying out an extensive analysis.

Almost all innovation takes place in metropolitan areas, according to the report. Less than one-fifth of metro areas, however, specialize in patenting — those having a share of U.S. metro patents greater than the share of metro jobs. The data show large metro areas, or those having more than 1 million jobs, are far more likely to specialize in patenting than smaller areas. Two-thirds of large metro areas specialize in patenting, compared to 14 percent of smaller metro areas. Larger metro areas have an advantage in the innovation process due to their greater specialization and diversity, the report states.

Other key findings include:

While many regions outside of major metropolitan areas may have difficulty competing in realms of technology development and retaining the jobs created by commercialization, they possess significant opportunities to specialize in certain aspects of commercialization of technologies created elsewhere, the report concludes.

The report ends by outlining models and options for regional technology transfer and commercialization programs and discussing ways in which existing development organizations can fruitfully interact with such programs. For this analysis, the report reviewed 400 programs and carried out 21 case studies of interactions between development organizations and technology transfer and commercialization programs. Observations are provided regarding the design of such programs in light of the realities of the geography of innovation.

The Digest thanks Andrew Reamer of Reamer & Associates for his help with this story. Technology Transfer and Commercialization is available for download at: http://www.tech-links.net/ttc.pdf

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Digest Takes a Break
The SSTI Weekly Digest will resume publication on January 9. We hope all our readers have a safe, prosperous, and happy 2004.

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