SSTI Digest

The Iowa Entrepreneurs Coalition has been formed to help advance an innovation- and entrepreneur-friendly agenda in the Iowa legislature.

The Georgia Department of Economic Development announced William Boone is the first director for the new Agricultural Center of Innovation.

Dyan Brasington, former president of the Technology Council of Maryland, is the new director of economic and workforce development at Towson University.

Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney promoted Renee Fry to serve as director of the Department of Business and Technology, the state agency tasked with retaining and attracting jobs and steering economic policy throughout the Commonwealth.

Sylvia Goldman has resigned as director of the Louisiana Department of Economic Development, effective at the end of March.

Wade Lange, president and CEO of the Indiana Health Industry Forum, announced he will be leaving the organization this summer to return to the private sector.

Greater Baltimore Technology Council executive director Penny Lewandowski is leaving at the end of May to join the Edward Lowe Foundation in Detroit. Assistant director Steve Kovak has been named her successor.

Jerry Lonergan, president of Kansas, Inc., is resigning effective April 1. A bill to dissolve the state's policy and planning organization passed the Kansas Senate last week.

Robert Rosner, chief scientist for the Argonne National Laboratory, will be the lab's new director.

Craig Watters is serving as interim director of the Falcone Center for Entrepreneurship at Syracuse University. Past director Nola Miyasaki has relocated to Hawaii to join a biotech company.

The fate of the Advanced Technology Program and the Administration's entire reorganization of federal economic development efforts also took hits, as parts of a series of Congressional votes on the budget. However, these votes are only the first step in a along budget process.

Senate Saves CDBG with Coleman Amendment

Last Thursday, 42 Democratic Senators joined one Independent and 23 Republicans in passing a Republican measure that blocks the key element of the White House plan to consolidate most economic development programs within the Department of Commerce's Economic Development Administration (EDA).

With Opening Day less than two weeks away, a baseball analogy is only fitting to suggest NIST's Advanced Technology Program (ATP) is in for a long season. Since 1990, ATP has provided early-stage funding for 768 projects to accelerate the development of innovative technologies that promise significant commercial payoffs and widespread benefits. While the program is still engaged with its portfolio of two-year awards from 2004, Congress did not appropriate any funding for a 2005 solicitation cycle for new projects. The Administration's fiscal year 2006 budget request recommended terminating the program altogether.