May 9, 2012
Underscoring President Obama’s commitments to keep college affordable, expand opportunities for American families nationwide, and promote education in the areas of science, technology, engineering and math, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu today announced that Illinois universities have been awarded a total of $2.8 million in research grants, scholarships and fellowships to train and educate the next generation of leaders in America’s nuclear industry. These awards to Illinois Institute of Technology, Northwestern University and University of Illinois – Urbana-Champaign are part of the Department’s Nuclear Energy University Program and Integrated University Program that will support nuclear energy R&D and student investment at 46 colleges and universities nationwide.
These efforts at the Department of Energy build on President Obama’s commitment to work with Congress to help keep college education affordable for America’s students by keeping interest rates low on student loans.
“We must invest in the next generation of American scientists and engineers in order to fulfill our commitment to restarting America’s nuclear industry and making sure that America stays competitive in the 21st century,” said Secretary Chu. “The awards announced today – from scholarships and fellowships to university-led nuclear research projects – are part of the Obama Administration’s efforts to keep college affordable for students nationwide. These investments in Illinois will help train and educate our future energy leaders, while developing the innovations we need to create new jobs and export opportunities for American-made nuclear technologies.”
Awards under the Nuclear Energy University Program are divided into multiple categories, including undergraduate scholarships, graduate fellowships, university-led research and development projects, and upgrades at university research reactors.
Read more at wifr.com, the CBS affiliate for the Rockford, Ill. area.
May 1, 2012
Chicago’s startup community wants to hire young people like Ravi Pilla.
Pilla belongs to an emerging generation of students who have caught the entrepreneurship bug, inspired by startup wunderkinds such as Facebook‘s Mark Zuckerberg and enabled by the proliferation of accessible technology that allows them to build Web applications at low cost. In response, local universities are seeking to provide these students with resources not only to pursue their startup ambitions during school, but to plug into the state’s blossoming entrepreneurial community when they enter the workforce.
For Chicago-area startups, the promise of a stronger pipeline of homegrown talent helps reverse a long-standing gripe that Illinois loses too many engineering and computer science graduates to Silicon Valley…”The idea that we have (more than 1,000) great engineers sitting a couple hours’ drive away who are not thinking first and foremost that they should be coming to Chicago is a problem, but it’s something a bunch of people are working on,” said Troy Henikoff, co-founder and chief executive of Chicago-based startup accelerator Excelerate Labs.
“There so many dots — if you connect all of them, you just have a black piece of paper,” said Lawrence Schook, vice president of research at U. of I., who serves on Gov. Pat Quinn’s Illinois Innovation Council. “But there’s a sense of … alignment. There has to be alignment between the role of government, business and universities. We can hand off all the pieces of a company, but we need an ecosystem.”
Read more at the Chicago Tribune.
April 30, 2012
WASHINGTON, D.C. (April 26, 2012) — The White House today released a national Bioeconomy Blueprint, a comprehensive approach to harnessing innovations in biological research to address national challenges in health, food, energy, and the environment. In coordination with the Blueprint’s release, Federal officials also announced a number of new commitments to help the Nation achieve the Blueprint’s goals.
The Bioeconomy Blueprint will guide Federal agencies—in coordination with one another and in partnership with private-sector entities—to enhance economic growth and job creation, improve the health of all Americans, and move toward a clean-energy future through scientific discovery and technological innovation.
The biological sciences have demonstrated enormous advances in recent years. As a result, economic activity fueled by research and innovation in those fields—the “bioeconomy”—is also growing rapidly, providing an expanding array of job opportunities in both rural and urban environments. In addition to the societal benefits these advances are bringing in health, medicine, and agriculture, and through the development of clean energy sources, researchers are generating a growing spectrum of bio-based products for use in industrial and chemical processes, helping to reduce reliance on petroleum-based products.
The Bioeconomy Blueprint highlights life-sciences advances the Obama Administration is fostering and provides a roadmap for taking even greater advantage of trends and emerging capacities in this fast-moving field. The Blueprint identifies five strategic objectives to enable a vibrant U.S. bioeconomy in the years and decades ahead, with potential to deliver major economic and social benefits:
- Support R&D investments that will provide the foundation for the future U.S. bioeconomy
- Facilitate the transition of bioinventions from research lab to market, including an increased focus on translational and regulatory sciences
- Develop and reform regulations to reduce barriers, increase the speed and predictability of regulatory processes, and reduce costs while protecting human and environmental health
- Update training programs and align academic institution incentives with student training for national workforce needs
- Identify and support opportunities for the development of public-private partnerships and precompetitive collaborations — where competitors pool resources, knowledge, and expertise to learn from successes and failures.
To read the full press release, click here.
To read the National Bioeconomy Blueprint, click here.
April 25, 2012
The tech startup hub in the Merchandise Mart called 1871 is lining up venture funds, universities and other long-term tenants along with young companies.
Venture funds I2A, Sandbox Ventures, New World Ventures, the fund backed by J.B. Pritzker who helped launch 1871, and Hyde Park Angels will lease office space in the building. OCA Ventures and Lightbank will sponsor conference rooms in the facility…Excelerate Labs, the startup accelerator, also says it’s leaving a loft in Greektown for 1871. The Illinois Science and Technology Coalition and Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center, which is managing the programs at the facility, also are moving in.
Read more at Ann Dwyer’s blog Crain’s Chicago Business.
April 20, 2012
Deerfield-based pharmaceutical company Baxter International Inc. plans to build a manufacturing plant and related facilities in Georgia, employing about 1,500 people across the state, Gov. Nathan Deal said.
In connection with the Georgia investment, the company expects to create more than 200 new positions in Illinois, which involves an existing facility in north suburban Round Lake, company executives said.
“This investment demonstrates our long-term commitment to patients around the world who rely on our plasma-based therapies,” Robert L. Parkinson Jr., Baxter’s chairman and chief executive officer, said in a statement.
Read more at the Chicago Sun-Times.
April 19, 2012
CHICAGO, Ill. (April 19, 2012) – The Illinois Smart Grid Regional Innovation Cluster (ISGRIC) today announced the selection of five new companies to join its innovation acceleration platform. The ISGRIC is a collaborative ecosystem designed to support smart grid innovators in order to enhance market opportunities, accelerate business and product development, advance a smarter electric grid and create jobs.
The ISGRIC’s partner organizations include the U.S. Small Business Administration, Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), Clean Energy Trust, the Illinois Science & Technology Coalition and O-H Community Partners.
The following smart grid companies will receive business, technical, public relations and commercialization assistance through the ISGRIC:
- Fortitud
- HEVT
- InvenTek
- NuCurrent
- Root Energy
Direct support from the ISGRIC gives companies the ability to utilize space at Illinois Institute of Technology, receive business development support though IIT’s Stuart School of Business, technical and public relations assistance through IIT’s Robert W. Galvin Center Center for Electricity Innovation, and commercialization support through project partners Clean Energy Trust and O-H Community Partners.
To read the full press release click here.
April 18, 2012
The April issue of the Illinois Innovation Index is out, and this month talks about how manufacturing drives strong export performance in Illinois.
From the Index:
“The globalization of commerce and economic growth in emerging countries create valuable opportunities for companies that can produce goods to meet the demand of international markets. From 2010 to 2011, exports generated more than 46 percent of the U.S. economy’s total growth — their largest share since 1929. U.S. exports supported 10.7 million jobs in 2010, and wages at exporting companies are, on average, 11 percent higher than those of non-exporting companies.
A number of factors — such as the levels of innovation, patenting, and clustering — affect a region’s volume of exports, which fuel the jobs, infrastructure, and global profile that contribute to broader economic health. Exports make up a significant share of the Illinois economy — 8.3 percent, ranking it 19th among all states. Illinois’ strengths as an exporter, driven by the Chicago Metropolitan region, positions it well to serve emerging markets, while supporting job retention and creation in key exporting industries.”
Read more here.
April 13, 2012
Illinois Institute of Technology President John L. Anderson will be honored with the National Engineering Award from the American Association of Engineering Societies at the association’s 33rd annual banquet and ceremony on Monday, April 16, 2012 in Washington, DC.
The National Engineering Award is presented for inspirational leadership and tireless devotion to the improvement of engineering education and to the advancement of the engineering profession, as well as to the development of sound public policies as an engineer-statesman. Anderson is being honored for innovations benefiting engineering students at Carnegie Mellon University, Case Western Reserve University and Illinois Institute of Technology. The award also recognizes his timely contributions to the engineering profession as a leader of many important National Research Council studies, including those influencing policies.
Read more at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s website.
April 10, 2012
CHICAGO – April 10, 2012 – The Illinois Science & Technology Coalition (ISTC), a statewide organization that works to cultivate innovation and technology-based economic development in Illinois, today announced that John Anderson, president of Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), has been elected chairman of its board of directors.
Since his inauguration in 2005, Anderson has focused on raising IIT’s profile as a technology-focused school and leveraging the university’s position in the city of Chicago. Committed to the value of higher education, he has previously held positions at various academic institutions, serving both as the provost of Case Western Reserve University and the dean of the College of Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. With more than 20 years of academic experience, Anderson provides a unique perspective on the science and technology industry.
“I am honored that the members of this distinguished organization have asked me to represent them as chairman,” said Anderson. “As an engineer, as well as the president of a technology-focused university committed to excellence in STEM education, I look forward to working with the board to find ways to make the state of Illinois a center for economic initiatives that have a science and technology base and focus.”
To read the full press release, click here.
April 5, 2012
ROCKFORD — For once, Rockford is beating the nation in a positive economic indicator.
Since April, workers in Boone and Winnebago counties have seen their average weekly wages grow faster than the national pace in every month except one, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The growth is a marked change from recent years, when local pay was stagnant compared with even the minuscule national growth.
Credit the Rock River Valley’s manufacturing base for the increase.
“Manufacturing, in general, pays higher wages than other sectors of the economy, so it doesn’t surprise me that our wages are beating the nation,” said John Lewis, an economist and former Northern Illinois University professor. “If you take a look historically, Rockford’s wage has been slightly above the national average for that reason.”
In January, the average gross wage in Boone and Winnebago counties was $836.52 a week, up 2.4 percent in the past year. Nationally the average was $814.20, up 2.6 percent from the previous year. January was the first month in which the national increase beat the local jump since March 2011.
Read more at the Rockford Register Star.
