Louisiana Department of Economic Development announced Robert Fudickar will be the technology industry director for the state agency.

Russel Hancock is the new president and CEO of Joint Venture: Silicon Valley.

The year-long battle between Lafayette Utilities System (LUS) and competitors BellSouth Louisiana and Cox Communications over the utility company's proposed Fiber for the Future project came to an end last month when voters approved the $125 million fiber optics plan by a vote of 62 percent to 38 percent.

A partnership between U.S. universities, research centers, private sector corporations, and Indian institutions recently was formed to improve engineering education in India and offer U.S. faculty the opportunity to collaborate with Indian researchers.

Pauli Jacobi, director of the Louisiana State University System Research and Technology Foundation, is resigning her position but will remain an LSU employee.

With hopes of creating a geographic concentration of academic and private bioscience research and commercialization, the Louisiana legislature ended its 2005 session with passage of a bill creating a new development authority.

California leads the world in biotech research today and likely will continue to dominate in the years to come according to The Dynamics of California's Biotechnology Industry, a new report from the Public Policy Institute of California. The report concludes that California retains a sharp biotech edge, despite reports of firms leaving the state or establishing plants elsewhere.

Louisiana State University's Business and Technology Center (LBTC) recently received the National Business Incubation Association's (NBIA) 2005 Randall M. Whaley Incubator of the Year award, recognizing overall excellence in business incubation programs. The award is NBIA's most prestigious honor, presented as a tribute to NBIA's first chairman.

A child born in the U.S. today who obtains a master's degree directly after college and high school will have been in the job market for only 1-2 years in 2030. Many people in the tech-based economic development community want that girl or boy to study math, science or engineering. A more basic question, though, is where will that child live as a young adult?

Two organizations with seemingly the same goal in mind recently released statistics on the health of their region's technology sectors. Relying on different methods, the Pittsburgh Technology Council (PTC) and the Sacramento Area Regional Technology Alliance (SARTA) both analyze and report the impact of technology clusters on the local economy.

What are the factors of commercial success? As they say in real estate: location, location, location.

So what makes a good location for commercializing innovation? Innovative ideas clearly thrive where R&D spending flows and local patent activity exists. But, do R&D dollars and level of patents also indicate locations for tech transfer?

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

A concentrated effort to support the Sacramento region's many green tech entrepreneurs could lead to Silicon Valley-style success in clean energy technology (CET), says a new report from the McClellan Technology Incubator and the Sacramento Area Regional Technology Alliance (SARTA).

One of the latest big-ticket investments targeting stem cell research came from Ann Arbor last week as the University of Michigan committed $10.5 million of its internal resources to establish an interdisciplinary center for stem cell research. The announcement is one of dozens from around the country since California voters approved Proposition 71 in 2004, borrowing $3 billion over 10 years for stem cell research.

In the Dec. 19, 2005 issue of the SSTI Weekly Digest, an editor's note highlighted the mega-investments several states are making to establish themselves as significant players in key research areas.

According to the latest index from JointVenture Silicon Valley, 2007 looks like a pretty good year compared to 2006 when you look at many standard measures of economic performance. There were 28,000 new jobs created, a 1.5 percent increase in population, and 21 percent growth in solar and wind energy installations. Water use also dropped 6 percent, venture capital investments were up 11 percent, median household income rose, and city revenues were up 37 percent.

 

Last week, three venture capital firms were chosen by the Department of Energy (DOE) to participate in its new Entrepreneurship in Residence (EIR) program, a pilot initiative designed to get advanced energy technologies out of the federal labs and into the marketplace. In the program’s design, an entrepreneur affiliated with each venture capital firm will work with the selected DOE laboratory staff in order to identify and evaluate marketable technologies.

 

Gov. Bobby Jindal unveiled his fiscal year 2008-09 budget to the legislature last week, focusing heavily on improving the existing workforce and creating a business climate that encourages entrepreneurship.

 

As renewable energy and environmental technologies emerge as some of the promising industries for high-tech economic development, more cities are seeking new ways to boost clean technology research and businesses. Austin, San Jose, Berkeley, Pasadena and Boston have been singled out for their efforts to promote cleantech industries by SustainLane Government, a nonprofit Internet-based organization that provides current practices and news about municipal sustainability.

Oleg Kaganovich will resign as CEO of the Sacramento Area Regional Technology Alliance (SARTA) in June 2007, but remain a member of SARTA's board of directors.