New Mexico Establishes Statewide Research Collaborative

With a combined annual research budget totaling $4.8 billion, New Mexico's 12 largest research facilities signed a Memorandum of Agreement on May 30 to help turn intellectual property into jobs for New Mexicans. Members of the newly formed New Mexico Technology Research Corridor (TRC) include:

• Air Force Research Laboratory's Directed Energy and Space Vehicles Directorates;
• Los Alamos National Laboratory, a government-operated facility that contributes to meeting the nation's nuclear and security needs;
• National Center for Genome Resources, a Santa Fe-based nonprofit research organization involved in bioinformatics.
• New Mexico State University;
• New Mexico Tech, a state engineering university;
• Sandia National Laboratories, a government-owned/contractor operated facility involved with national security research and development projects;
• Santa Fe Institute, a private, nonprofit, multidisciplinary research and education center;
• The MIND Institute, an Albuquerque-based partnership that explores functional brain imaging;
• University of New Mexico and its Health Sciences Center; and,
• White Sands Missile Range, which provides test, evaluation, research and other technical services to the Army and Department of Defense acquisition programs.

Research commissioned by Technology Ventures Corporation (TVC) identified four opportunity clusters that are a product of the blended core competencies of the 12 research institutions. In addition to securing patents and getting joint technology commercialized, TVC will also help the TRC institutions to collectively submit requests for new funding for cooperative research.

The nonprofit TVC, founded in 1993 by Lockheed Martin, helps entrepreneurs develop businesses around technologies and obtain funding from across the country for New Mexico business formations.