SSTI Digest

Are you thinking about making a career change? If so, visit the SSTI Job Corner at http://www.ssti.org/posting.htm. In addition to the new opportunities described below, the SSTI Job Corner has openings for these positions: Executive Director at the Georgia Medical Center Authority Director of the Student Innovation Center with the University of Maine Or, maybe you're interested in posting a position. SSTI members are entitled to unlimited, free postings, and a brief mention in the SSTI Weekly Digest. The cost for all others is $95 per ad, which will run for 30 days on the SSTI Job Corner. To place a job posting, contact Noelle Sheets at 614.901.1690. New opportunities are highlighted below. Each opportunity was announced by TechColumbus, a nonprofit corporation focused on developing local opportunities to impact Central Ohio's tech-based business growth: Director of IT Commercialization Services. This position is primarily responsible for recruiting, mentoring, assisting and servicing client companies of TechColumbus Incubation Services tenant and client companies. The position also will collaborate…

Complete descriptions of the position openings described below are available at http://www.ssti.org/posting.htm. The Georgia Medical Center Authority (GMCA), a state authority whose mission is to develop the life sciences industry in Georgia, is seeking an executive director. Reporting directly to the GMCA board, this individual is responsible for managing the Augusta BioBusiness Center, the provision of bond financing for life science R&D and manufacturing facilities statewide, leadership in developing a research park in east central Georgia, recruiting companies, and performing other duties. The successful candidate ideally will have educational and work experience related to life sciences business development and bond financing, and be a proven executive with outstanding communication and interpersonal skills. The University of Maine is seeking a director for its newly created Student Innovation Center. Reporting to the senior vice president for academic affairs and provost, the director is primarily responsible for providing leadership for the center, which includes all academic, fiscal, strategic planning and…

The Georgia Department of Economic Development (GDEcD) is seeking a director to run its Innovation and Technology Office. The director is responsible for implementing and expanding a statewide technology and innovation-based economic development program that encompasses a full range of sales, marketing, business recruitment, business development, community development and public relations activities. A bachelor's degree in the life sciences, engineering or a closely related field is required; a master's degree in these fields is preferred. A full description of this opportunity and others is available through the SSTI Job Corner at http://www.ssti.org/posting.htm.

Describing the impact of universities can be a vexing issue for both the higher education and TBED communities. Two recent reports, one by the Atlanta Regional Council for Higher Education (ARCHE) and the other by the Iowa Board of Regents, utilize different approaches to help communicate the importance of higher education institutions to a local economy.   The ARCHE report combines economic development statistics derived from input-output analysis with the personal stories of seven individuals who in some form are heavily influenced by the presence of the 49 degree-granting, accredited higher education institutions located in the Atlanta region. The report emphasizes the economic and social impact that the region’s universities have on hundreds of thousands of individuals and the state of Georgia. Some of the economic impacts of the region’s universities include: $10.8 billion in spending from institutions, employees, students, visitors and capital expenditures, the total of which is equal to 3.2 percent of the annual gross state product of Georgia; 129,000 jobs are created in Georgia each year in a variety of industry sectors, which is…

The six position opportunities described below were posted on the SSTI Job Corner over the last week. For more information, including complete details on responsibilities, qualifications and application deadlines (when available), visit http://www.ssti.org/posting.htm. Georgia Tech's Program in Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy (STIP), a joint program of the Georgia Tech School of Public Policy and the Georgia Tech Enterprise Innovation Institute, seeks applicants for two postdoctoral positions: (1) program manager; and (2) research associate II. Applicants should have a background and interests in one or more of these STIP research thrusts: strategic technologies and regional innovation clusters; research commercialization; universities and technology development; knowledge measurement; scientific and technological human capital; industrial modernization; and diversity and innovation. A doctoral degree in public policy, city and regional planning, economics, management or a related discipline is required. Competitive salary and benefits packages based on experience. These are both one-year positions and may be renewed annually.…

Over the past six years, SSTI has dedicated a portion of the Digest to coverage on the legislative priorities of governors across the nation through the Tech Talkin' Govs series. As they say, talk is cheap. So this year, we are extending that coverage to track how the Governors' proposals fared in the respective legislative sessions. In the coming months, as many sessions come to an end, SSTI will take a look back on the governors' state-of-the-state, budget, and inaugural addresses and report the good, the bad and the ugly of the 2006 legislative decisions. Georgia During his State-of-the State Address (see the Jan. 16, 2006 issue of the Digest), Gov. Sonny Perdue proposed several key initiatives to support tech-based economic development. The legislature approved several of the governor's requests for funding, including: $5 million for a Life Sciences Facilities Fund; $5 million for the ATDC Seed Capital Fund; $4.7 million to the GRA Alliance VentureLab and Patent Fund and funding for two eminent scholars; $4 million for a grant program…

Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue appointed Debra Lyons to lead the newly created Office of Workforce Development.

Dr. R. Kelly Dawe was named the inaugural Georgia Research Alliance (GRA) Distinguished Investigator, a new level of investment made by GRA.

Georgia Tech announced that Dr. Jeffrey Skolnick will join its faculty this spring as the Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Computational Systems Biology.

While women are making strides in entrepreneurship, they still have a ways to go, particularly in science and technology (S&T) fields. This was the theme during the session, Encouraging Women Entrepreneurship, conducted during SSTI's 9th Annual Conference on Oct. 19-21, 2005. Maggie Kenefake, manager of women's entrepreneurship at the Kauffman Foundation, said there are encouraging signs that women are stepping up to the plate, so to speak, when it comes to owning their own businesses. For example, the rate of increase for starting new firms among women is three times the rate for men, and women-owned businesses currently account for 40 percent of all start-ups. Unfortunately, women are still underrepresented in most S&T fields, with the exception of life and behavioral sciences, Kenefake said. Fewer than 10 percent of engineers are women, and less than half of all Ph.D.'s are women. Americans cannot compete globally if they continue to underutilize half the population, she added. Kenefake stressed that the focus should not be why women lag behind men in…

Over the last 15 years, few states have been as focused on investing in higher education to encourage sustainable economic prosperity as Georgia. At SSTI's 9th Annual Conference on Oct. 19-21, 2005, presenters made the case that the southern state is a national leader in American higher education. Higher Ed as the Basis for Economic Growth: The Georgia Story featured Mike Cassidy, president and chief executive officer of the Georgia Research Alliance (GRA). Joining Cassidy were Michael Gerber, president of the Atlanta Regional Council for Higher Education (ARCHE), Joy Hymel, executive director of the Intellectual Capital Partnership Program (ICAPP), and David Lee, director of strategic research and analysis of the Georgia Student Finance Commission (GSFC). The session examined the full spectrum of Georgia's strategy to encourage university-oriented tech-based economic development (TBED) through workforce preparedness, research funding, infrastructure development, technology commercialization, and regional branding. GRA, a public-private partnership that acts as…

Note: This is the first in a series of articles SSTI will be running over the next several weeks to provide synopses of selected breakout sessions from SSTI's 9th Annual Conference, held Oct. 19-21, 2005, in Atlanta. Ideas for 2006 conference sessions can be forwarded to skinner@ssti.org. Look for more news on SSTI's 10th annual conference beginning in late winter. The Oct. 21 morning conference session, Sound Strategies for Encouraging Regional Entrepreneurship, was presented by two dynamic speakers who offered an array of valuable lessons learned garnered through years of experience promoting growth through strategic science and technology strategies. Michael Finney, former president and chief executive officer of Greater Rochester Enterprise (GRE), began the session with the story of how the public-private partnership became a success so quickly. A team of practitioners visited 24 regions in the U.S. to interview, learn and observe what was being done to encourage regional entrepreneurship, and what seemed to be working. The GRE team then created a top 10 best practices list…