A recent study by the Council for Education Policy, Research and Improvement finds that State University System Centers and Institutes (C&Is) in Florida are cost-effective and creative settings for scientific discovery, technological innovation, policy development, teaching and instruction and public outreach activities.

Dennis Lower of the Biomedical Research Foundation of Northwest Louisiana is the new leader of the Louisiana Economic Development Council.

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

The Center for Economic Forecasting and Analysis at Florida State University has completed a New Economy index for Tallahassee, showing how the Florida capital compares with 66 MSAs and, in a second analysis, a comparison of 20 Florida MSAs. Tallahassee ranks 11th among all MSAs assessed, a finding the authors suggest confirms "the city's economy has a number of very strong advantages."

Florida's High Tech Corridor and LaGrange, Georgia, have been named two of the world's top seven "intelligent" communities in a recent report by the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF), a project of the New York-based telecommunication group World Teleport Association.

Enterprise Florida has named Darrell Kelley as its new president and chief executive officer effective August 5. Kelley currently is the president of the defense-related technology incubator, MILCOM Technologies.

Ray Gilley, president of Metro Orlando Economic Development Commission, has been appointed chairman of Workforce Florida.

Senate Bill 1844, signed by Governor Jeb Bush this week, provides $30 million to create Centers of Excellence and includes several other key elements of the Florida Technology Development Initiative, proposed by Governor Bush in his State of the State speech this year.

The University of Florida is seeking a creative and versatile individual to assist in partnership development and commercialization of technologies for UF and its sponsoring agencies. The primary responsibility for this position will be to serve as Deputy Director for the Environmental Systems Commercial Space Technology Center (ES CSTC), a NASA sponsored environmental research center.

The 2002 Special Session of the Louisiana State Legislature has yielded a series of tax credits that aim to benefit biotechnology companies in Louisiana, promote commercialization of technology, encourage R&D investments, and make the state more competitive in information technology. The tax credits are as follows:

For the second year in a row, Florida cities dominate the Milken Institute's top 200 largest U.S. metropolitan areas in the ability to create and sustain jobs. The top performer, Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville, moved up 31 places from last year and is followed by last year's top scorer, Cape Coral-Fort Myers, and Naples-Marco Island, respectively.

Sometimes, the economic advantages of consolidating state and local initiatives addressing different elements of building tech-based economies outweighs any potential dilution of specific efforts. Other times, the addition of an entirely new entity is required to provide concentrated focus on specific needs or activities. Here are a few of the most recent examples of the realignment of the TBED community:

Formerly the marketing manager for a local software firm, Mary Bergeron recently was named the new executive director of the Baton Rouge Technology Council.