SSTI Digest

Jerome Mahone is the new director of Venture Creations, a business incubator at Rochester Institute of Technology.

Richard Murphy was named interim president of the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM). Arlene Chiu announced she will resign as interim chief scientific officer of CIRM, effective Oct. 31.

Andre Pettigrew was named the new head of economic development for the City of Denver. Pettigrew replaces John Huggins, who left earlier this year.

Seth Porter was selected as deputy director for Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter's Energy Office.

William Stephan has been appointed vice president of engagement for Indiana University, a new position aimed at furthing economic development and related outcomes.

Dr. J. Timothy Stout has been named to the newly created position of vice president for commercialization strategies at Oregon Heath and Science University.

The Tech Council of Maryland/MdBio has appointed Dr. Richard Zakour to lead MdBio and the MdBio Foundation as executive director.

After months of negotiations, the House and Senate have approved the most significant bill in years to bolster U.S. research. The America Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education and Science (COMPETES) Act authorizes over $43 billion in new federal spending over the next three years, which will support U.S. math and science education and federal research agencies. In fact, the legislation would double the budget authorizations of the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Science, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) laboratory activities.   Past issues of the SSTI Weekly Digest have covered the progress of the COMPETES Act (see the April 23, 2007 and June 20, 2007 issues). Earlier this year, both houses of Congress passed legislation that incorporated many of the recommendations provided by the influential National Academies report Rising Above the Gathering Storm. The current, reconciled bill, passed by the House and Senate last Thursday, contains many provisions that directly result from the report. These include a requirement that all research…

While many parts of the country are looking for innovative means to increase the number of citizens and businesses connected to high-speed Internet in both urban and rural areas, two governors recently announced initiatives targeting the further extension of broadband services throughout their states. Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick declared the commonwealth would invest $25 million into a new “broadband incentive fund” to be managed by a division of the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative (MTC), named the Broadband Institute. Under the plan, private companies will compete for funds to install equipment such as network fiber and wireless towers in rural areas that currently do not have broadband. According to the MTC, 32 towns in Massachusetts lack broadband access and 63 municipalities only have broadband in a limited area. The program’s goal is to make broadband available to all communities by 2010. Ohio’s recent moves have targeted the expansion of broadband delivery to multiple stakeholders, including state and local government. Gov. Ted Strickland signed an executive order that extends and strengthens the state’s broadband…

The India Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises announced last week a plan to provide funding to 50 universities and training institutions for the creation of up to 100 enterprise incubators within innovative fields.   While the details have yet to be released, the Ministry plans to provide funding to 50 universities to create up to 100 incubators that will host approximately 1,000 micro and small enterprises over five years. The government will provide grants of Rs. 5 lakh per incubator - about $62,000 USD - to help support and promote emerging industries, including biotechnology and pharmaceuticals.   Last year, the Parliament enacted The Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Act of 2006, calling for the “promotion and development and enhancing the competitiveness of micro, small and medium enterprises.”   More information about the Act is available at: http://ssi.nic.in/MSME%20Development%20Gazette.htm

Policymakers and researchers in the U.S. continue to debate the effectiveness and value of providing R&D subsidies to firms in the hope of spurring technological developments and wealth generation. At the national level, several organizations have called to make the federal R&D tax credit, also known as the Research and Experimentation Tax Credit (RETC), a permanent incentive program. Researchers centered in countries outside of the U.S. are looking at the effectiveness of R&D subsidies in their nations, as well.   Three recent papers, which separately review Canadian, Catalonian (a region of Spain), and Norwegian efforts to support industrial R&D, find subsidies do influence company performance, mostly positively. In the Norwegian paper, however, not all impacts at the firm level are the desired ones. All three papers are highlighted below.   Charles Bérubé and Pierre Mohnen explore data from manufacturing firms responding to the 2005 Canadian Innovation Survey in order to distinguish if firms that received R&D grants and R&D tax credits produced more innovative outputs than firms that received…

An expected explosion of health-related expenditures combined with no new policy changes will likely result in fiscal challenges for state and local governments within the next decade, says a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The result could put downward pressure on public funding available to support TBED initiatives.   The expected continued rise in health care costs poses a fiscal challenge not just to government budgets, but to American business and society as a whole, according to the report. Using data from the National Income and Product Accounts, GAO ran long-term simulations extending until 2050 that indicate the combined effects of demographic changes and growing health care costs drive increasing federal deficits and debt levels. GAO’s fiscal model of the state and local sector projects the level of recipients and expenditures in future years based on historical spending and revenue patterns.   Findings of the simulation indicate that two types of state and local expenditures will rise quickly because of escalating medical costs: Medicaid expenditures and health insurance for state…