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People

The Wright Center of Innovation for Advanced Data Management and Analysis changed its name to daytaOhio and named Paul Cashen as its new president.

People

Former Lansing Community College president Paula Cunningham is the new director of the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Growth.

People

Dan Curran is the new director of the Business Development Division of the Nebraska Department of Development.

People

Ted Ford, former president and CEO of the Edison Welding Institute, recently was named president and CEO of TECHColumbus.

People

Sandy Johnson, interim CEO of the Mid-American Manufacturing Technology Center, was appointed to the position on a permanent basis.

People

Roger Kilmer was appointed director of the Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership program at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Kilmer served as acting director since Kevin Carr's departure last June.

People

Sean O'Kane, commissioner of the New Hampshire Department of Resources and Economic Development, is resigning from the position at the end of his two-year term in March to return to the private sector.

People

BioFlorida President Diana Robinson is leaving to join a private venture capital company once her replacement is selected.

People

Tim Rubald, interim executive director of the Nevada Commission on Economic Development, was appointed to the position on a permanent basis.

People

Harvard University President Lawrence Summers announced his resignation this afternoon. Former Harvard president Derek Bok is to serve as interim president for the university.

Publisher's Note: FY2007 Budget Request Represents a Mixed Bag

Over the last year, there has been increased public and government attention on issues involving tech-based economic development. For much of the year, Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat has dominated the New York Times bestseller list. A series of reports from the AeA, Council on Competitiveness, and the National Academy of Sciences call for increased action by the federal government. To help address a flattening world, Congress is now considering significant bi-partisan legislation addressing those report's recommendations. And just in the last month, a series of governors have unveiled plans for dramatic new investments in innovation, science, and technology. It is fitting, then, that President Bush made competitiveness a major theme of his State of the Union and, in his budget proposal, unveiled his American Competitiveness Initiative (see below for details).

Special Initiative - The American Competitiveness Initiative

During his 2006 State of the Union Address, President Bush outlined a decade-long $50 billion American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI) for R&D, education and entrepreneurship. The FY 2007 downpayment on ACI is $5.9 billion, which is accomplished by shuffling priorities within a shrinking federal discretionary budget environment to find $1.3 billion in new funding and $4.6 billion in R&D tax incentives. Specifically, ACI calls for: