If you haven't noticed, California and Massachusetts are going head-to-head on biotech and clean energy leadership. Governors Schwarzenegger and Patrick both aim to attract the top scientists and companies to their state.
At the Biotechnology International Convention in San Diego, Schwarzenegger stated that, “California is the place to set-up shop.” He touted $73 billion in annual revenue for the California biomedical industry, which he added, “excludes the sales of Botox.”
As the competition heats up, I am keeping an eye on what is happening out west. It appears that they are pulling out all the stops.
The San Francisco Business Times reports that Segway users now will be able to bring the scooters on BART (as in MBTA) with some limited restrictions. The BART board approved a one-year pilot program covering guidelines for using Segways on BART. The newspaper estimates that only 15 to 20 Segway owners ride BART.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
The Venture Development Center team consumes vast quantities of research results that bear on how large unwieldy organizations manage to think and work in new ways to achieve superior performance.
Here are some interesting snippets from Getting Down to the Business of Creativity published on May 14, 2008 by Harvard Business School Working Knowledge. Three faculty members discuss where creativity comes from, how entrepreneurs use it, and why innovation is often a team sport.
"The desire to do something because you find it deeply satisfying and personally challenging inspires the highest levels of creativity, whether it's in the arts, sciences, or business.”
Research demonstrates the causal relationship between emotion and creativity, “with positive emotion tied to higher creativity and negative feelings linked to lower motivation and creativity.”
So what can managers do to promote a healthy, positive work life among employees? A pat on the back is always welcome. But research shows that “people have their best days and do their best work when they are allowed to make progress.”
(This reminds me of one comment universally endorsed that appears in the report of the Research and Graduate Studies Committee during UMass Boston's strategic planning process about reengineering internal business processes to be a tailwind versus a headwind.)
“Maximum diversity in cultures, disciplines, and backgrounds—the intersection where creativity is most likely to occur.”
"In business, people can go only so far by doing things the way they have always been done. In entrepreneurship especially, it is essential to perceive opportunities that others have not, and to pursue them in novel yet appropriate ways at every stage of the game. Such creative solutions will be necessary for managers to help solve the socioeconomic challenges of the future."
"As a manager, you need to create a culture that will convince people to kick off the filters they're used to applying and to think more broadly. It is the shift in the mindset of employees that can prove most difficult."
Monday, August 25, 2008
UMass Boston’s Venture Development Center represents the new model of research parks integrated into the fabric of the university, according to a report, "Characteristics and Trends in North American Research Parks: 21st Century Directions", prepared by Battelle's Technology Partnership Practice (TPP) in partnership with the Association of University Research Parks (AURP).
Today’s research parks differ substantially from the model that emerged in the 1970’s. Most early research parks were first and foremost real-estate development projects. The companies that located in the parks usually had few, if any, actual ties to the university. In the 1990s, research parks began to place greater emphasis on supporting incubation and entrepreneurship. Like the Venture Development Center, the newest versions create an innovative environment with free and frequent exchange of information between academic researchers and their industry counterparts, the report says.
"A new model is emerging," said Walter H. Plosila, Vice-President, Battelle TPP, when the report was released at the AURP Annual Conference. "What we're seeing are strategically planned, mixed-use campuses designed to create an environment that fosters collaboration and innovation and promotes the development, transfer and commercialization of technology."
Challenges facing the integrated research park include bridging cultural barriers between the academic and business communities and facilitating a true partnership. Parks must continue to serve as an intermediary that understands both cultures and creatively fosters integrated, collaborative efforts, the report says.
Most research parks have very few resources in their early stages and do not generate sufficient revenue to be self-supporting. “Parks need diversified funding sources, and investments in research parks need to be considered as investments in a region’s economic development infrastructure,” the report states.
The TTP survey of 174 university research parks in the United States and Canada revealed that:
* More than 300,000 workers in North America work in a located in a university research park.
* Every job in a research park generates an average of 2.57 jobs in the economy resulting in a total employment impact of more than 750,000 jobs.
Important success factors for technology-led economic development include the commitment of university leadership and the local economic development community. This report quantifies actual results of science parks as an important economic development tool.
A full copy of "Trends and Characteristics in North American Research Parks: 21st Century Directions" can be found at http://www.aurp.net/more/pr102607.cfm.
An article last week in the Boston Business Journal titled “Schools boost tech-transfer efforts, and VCs take note” included an apt remark by UMass President Jack Wilson. Emphasizing the importance of championing entrepreneurial activity, he said: "If you’re not doing these things you’re not going to be a great university. And by the way, you’re not going to attract the best faculty and you’re not going to attract the best students.”
Maybe that is why President Wilson beamed when he toured the future home of the UMass Boston Venture Development Center. I know it is how I felt last week when I showed the nearly completed 18,000 SF metal and glass high-tech facility to a candidate for a department chair at UMass Boston. This candidate not only has outstanding scientific credentials, but is a leader in furthering diversity by training underrepresented minority students in science, and has formed a company with a few graduate students that needs a home.
The Venture Development Center is not just a recruitment strategy though. It is a powerful new way for UMass Boston’s faculty, staff and students to express their passion to drive lasting change, either in society or the economy or both, in response to opportunities to create new products and services that dramatically improve people’s lives.
Watch out Boston, we are on the move!
Sunday, August 24, 2008
A few dozen shaggy sheep graze at Stóra-Seyla, a farm in a fjord valley in the northern part of Iceland named Skagafjörður. Beneath them deep in the wind-blown deposits lie the remains that archaeologists believe document the wrenching transition of Iceland from chiefdoms to state. The Skagafjordur Archaeological Settlement Survey (SASS) led by UMass Boston’s John Steinberg has had to develop novel techniques to understand what happened during the transition.
Icelandic history is largely informed by sagas, which give fascinating details into the lives of people living during the Viking and Middle Ages. The level of historical accuracy is widely debated, with some seeing the sagas as fairly accurate while others the texts as mere myth making amongst a hero-obsessed culture. Still others see an unwritten saga that needs to be told.
Iceland was one of the last places on earth to be settled. The first settlers were chieftains, wealthy farmers, and their households fleeing state consolidation in Norway over a thousand years ago. The resulting settlements of chiefs and autonomous farmers meant that each held large territories by virtue of first possession and their ability to muster the might to defend them.
Steinberg’s previous research has demonstrated that about 150 years after the first settlement, smaller farmsteads were split off from the larger, earlier farmsteads. This split was a critical step in the development of a society of landed landlords and tenants, resulting in pronounced disparities in wealth and status. The sagas describe the fierce competition among the thirty chieftains over several hundred years that ended in civil war and the King of Norway taking control of Iceland.
The SASS team is comparing Stóra-Seyla to two other nearby farmstead clusters in Skagafjordur identified in previous survey work. This will provide data to answer questions concerning how chiefly strategies both adapt and fail. For example, were small farms split off as a result of population growth, economic opportunity, or environmental degradation? Answering these and other basic economic questions about the development of social inequality is an objective of the SASS program.
Archeology is difficult in Iceland. There are virtually no trees, so buildings were constructed from turf. Overgrazing caused all the soil from the highlands to eventually blow onto the coastal regions, covering a substantial percentage of the productive land. As a result, the archeology is deeply buried and therefore invisible, especially in the most important areas.
Steinberg, a senior scientist at UMass Boston’s Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research, addressed this problem by using sophisticated equipment that measures the electrical conductivity and resistance of soil. The turf used in construction has a much lower conductivity, so electrical patterns reveal where walls are located. Once these buried structures are located, dating their construction material is routine because of the volcanic ash layers that are in the walls and cover them.
Steinberg’s techniques allow rapid excavation with a small crew. “We can see what we are going to find before we find it,” noted Steinberg in an interview this summer on Icelandic television, sparing the landscape from large-scale excavation.
The SASS team has been working in Skagafjörður since 2001. During the excavation this summer, a number of rare finds were uncovered, including a Viking Age ring pin and an unusual copper coin. The ring pin is a plain ring with a polyhedral head. It has a chevron pattern on the shank and a dot pattern on the head. The copper coin is intriguing as most Viking Age coinage was silver.
Steinberg’s ultimate goal is to understand the radical transition in property systems and what it means for sustainability. For centuries, the settlers managed to live in a free state and avoid destroying their land before the transition.
In 2007, Harcourt Trade published a book called The Far Traveler: Voyages of a Viking Woman, by Nancy Brown which recounts Steinberg’s archaeological advances which Brown observed during her volunteer stint with SASS. They are woven in a story of a chieftain’s daughter-in-law compelled by the exigencies of a feudal economy to sail across the North Atlantic in search of new pasturelands.
The SASS program is funded by the National Science Foundation.
Friday, August 22, 2008
This is a visual representation of how Google sees the content on our web site. The size and color of each word reflects how frequently it appears in the overall page. Google doesn't care how our site looks. Only the words we use on our site form the online brand. I think we got it right.
These images were generated using a tool at http://wordle.net/.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
During the 2006-2007 academic year, UMass Boston set a new record for grant and sponsored program awards— $45,435,687, an 8.77% increase over FY07 and a total increase of nearly 50% in the last six years. UMass Boston received 312 awards, a 28.93% increase over FY07. A total of 351 proposals were submitted. Also in FY08, a total of 592 active sponsored programs (a 12.76% increase over FY07) expended $38,895,922 (a 12.48% increase over FY07).
UMass Boston’s researchers work long and hard to be successful. With their fingers on the pulse of the region and its needs, they create the new knowledge that helps drive the growth of the region’s economy. Their grant and sponsored program activity also strengthens the social fabric of the region by supporting neighborhoods and providing arts and cultural activities for thousands of people. Whatever the topic their research addresses, the goal is impact. We celebrate their success!
Saturday, August 16, 2008
In about eight weeks, an 18,000 sf high-tech metal-and-glass innovation center will be substantially completed in the former cafeteria in the heart of Wheatley Hall on the campus of the University of Massachusetts Boston.
The construction has been managed so well that most don’t even know its underway. When we take people on tours of the work in progress, their jaws drop. Its so different, most say, so well, like UMass Boston we want to see.
What better symbol of the institution’s transformation than a place that celebrates its visionaries? They are the team-builders, risk-takers and change-makers in our midst. You know them well. They are the ones who see things differently. The ones driven by passion to make a big difference. The ones who don't worry about current resources or fuss about who gets what since there will be plenty for all. You can praise them or vilify them, but you can’t ignore them. Because they are creating the future of the university.
And now, finally, they have a place to call their own, a home away from home. Its called the Venture Development Center (VDC). What will they do in this place? Last year, we gathered thirty-five visionaries to ask this question. Our architect, world-renowned Sasaki Associates Inc., listened carefully:
- The group wanted a place with raw edges to reflect our urban roots yet abundant with amenities, one that would delight their colleagues at the bench and in the boardroom.
- They wanted a place with advanced yet easy to use technology that enables any-time, any-place collaboration.
- They wanted a place insulated from daily business where they can experiment with what works and doesn’t without disturbing their current workspace.
- They wanted a place where their partners from industry and other research organizations can work side-by-side with them for an extended time.
- They wanted blazing fast electronic connections to manipulate and visualize large data sets.
- They wanted a place to relax, in a coffee bar or bookstore like atmosphere where they can informally discuss.
- They wanted a secure, private place to repair to think and reflect.
- And they also wanted professional support, so good they wouldn’t mind paying for it.
- Four small group collaboration spaces for teams to develop plans and proposals.
- One large presentation space for video conferencing and presentations.
- Six labs - two with with fume hoods and two without, and two dry labs, for experimenting with ideas, proving concepts.
- Ten temporary offices for individual work.
- A display area for receptions and showcasing work.
- A lounge and terrace for relaxing while enjoying stunning views of the harbor.
Visions need a great process to realize their potential. That is where our team of professionals come in. You excel on the technical side, we excel on the execution side, the stuff you feel kind of lost trying to deal with. As part of your team, we work with you to assemble everything you need to be successful. We help you rapidly experiment with what works and doesn't, build support, and mobilize resources. When you succeed so do we.
The VDC itself was a vision only a few years ago. It is the kind of bold innovation we help you bring about in your own areas.
So, send us the visionaries. The ones who see abundance. The future of the university depends upon it.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Beacon Hill, with strong backing from the life science industry, has approved a $1 billion, 10-year life science initiative, a cornerstone of Governor Patrick's economic strategy. He hopes the bill will lure biotechnology companies to the state, creating high-paying, quality jobs while holding onto scientists and researchers at state institutions.
The bill includes $250 million in tax credits for life sciences companies that agree to create jobs in the Commonwealth. Another $250 million is set aside for research grants to encourage those conducting the cutting edge research to stay in Massachusetts.
The remaining $500 million would be dedicated for major construction and improvement projects designed to benefit the industry. One of those is a $10 million Center for Personalized Cancer Therapy at UMass Boston in partnership with the Dana Farber Harvard Cancer Center. UMass Boston was quick to win one of the initial $750,000 grants from the new life sciences center board, responsible for allocating the new state funds, for start-up funds to recruit a nationally prominent scientist to lead the Center. Overall, UMass won over one-quarter of the $1 billion life science bill for various projects.
In another bond bill approved this year by Beacon Hill lawmakers is $2.2 billion, 10-year higher education bill to help pay for new building and renovation projects at the state's public universities and colleges. As part of the bond bill, UMass Boston will receive $125 million in new funding the bulk of which will fund a new integrated sciences building.
The state investments in science and technology come at a time when federal research investments are shrinking as a share of the U.S. economy, just as other nations are increasing their investments, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Federal investment in research will fall in real terms for the fifth year in a row. Massachusetts’ young scientists are stuck behind their mentors in a federal funding queue that is stalling promising careers in academic research and development.
At a hearing in March of this year on a report called "A Broken Pipeline," Senator Edward Kennedy warned: "If we lose the talents of a generation of young researchers, we put in peril not only medical progress, but our leadership in life sciences too," he said. "A culture of innovation and discovery does not just happen. It must be nurtured or it will wither."
The new state investments come on the heals of an economic stimulus bill two years ago through which UMass Boston obtained $5 million for an 18,000 SF Venture Development Center, opening early next year. The Center for Personalized Cancer Therapy is expected to be a magnet for young scientists requiring small, reasonably priced office and lab space in the Venture Development Center for starting their own companies.
Massachusetts is “the gold standard” according to the Milken Institute’s 2008 State Technology and Science Index. The surge in authorized borrowing this year has signaled that Massachusetts will not be outdone when it comes to science and technology, and that UMass is a cornerstone of the state’s strategy.
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