Innovation Institute Investments

(Continued from front page)

DARTMOUTH – To help create a Massachusetts Ocean Observation System Center at the University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth, the John Adams Innovation institute has invested $150,000 from its Collaborative R&D Partnership Development Grant Program. This is the second of a series of complementary investments that the Innovation Institute anticipates making in the Marine S&T sector.

The new center will support the establishment of expanded major R&D partnerships and create the framework for a new Center of Excellence in Applied Ocean Systems.

The objective of the new center is to develop technology-based solutions that energize emerging markets in the marine science and technology sector. A recent report by the Donahue Institute at the University of Massachusetts documented that the marine science and technology sector is a major contributor to the state’s economy, employing about 9,000 people and generating about $1.5 billion in total sales a year. About half of the economic activity is concentrated in marine instrumentation and equipment.

The Dartmouth campus serves as the focal point for the multi-campus School for Marine Sciences and Technology (SMAST), with scientific expertise in ocean modeling and monitoring, fisheries science and management, coastal systems science, ocean acoustics, biogeochemistry, remote sensing and ocean engineering.

The center will be a partnership between UMass Dartmouth and UMass Boston,  with expected additional academic partnerships with MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Lockheed-Martin Sippican, one of the largest marine science and technology companies in Massachusetts, is an initial industrial partner.

At its February 6 meeting, the Governing Board of the John Adams Innovation Institute, Robert Gagosian, the President of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and Chancellor Jean MacCormack of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth shared their vision of the emerging sector.

According to Gagosian, the potential economic benefits from increasing the predictive capability as a result of ocean exploration were enormous – hundreds of millions each annually in the recreation, commercial, fishing, defense and homeland security sectors.

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WORCESTER – To help establish a Collaborative Imaging Biomarker Center, the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester was awarded $50,000 by the John Adams Innovation Institute. The investment will assess the feasibility of the new center, with an additional $100,000 reserved to support business model development if the feasibility study demonstrates the center’s viability.

The feasibility study will determine the extent that industry will provide financial support to the new center, the potential commercial value of intellectual property generated by pre-competitive research, and the likelihood that the center can attract the necessary capital and operating funds.

The goal of the center is to accelerate drug development through the application of biomarker imagining techniques at the cellular and molecular levels.

To date, the project has received contributions from the University of Massachusetts President’s S&T Fund and from Merck. AstraZeneca, Wyeth and Bristol-Myers Squibb are considering proposals to provide additional funding. The project was originally organized by Mass Insight through its Drug Discovery Working Group, an outgrowth of its Technology Roadmap study.

Members of the working group have included: AstraZeneca, Wyeth, Biogen, Merck, Partners Health Care, Mass General Hospital, the University of Massachusetts, PAREXEL, Bristol-Meyers Squibb Imaging, PerkinElmer, and Novartis.

When the Collaborative Imaging Biomarker Center is fully operational, it is envisioned to employ about 125 people and have an annual operating budget of about $25 million.

The targeted activities of the center are projected to:

• accelerate drug development at lower risks and costs for pharmaceutical companies and biotech firms;
• provide access to facilities such as test beds for start-up and emerging biotech firms, as well as opportunities for strategic alliances with biopharmaceutical companies;
• support the expanded development and use of imaging technologies by medical device companies in support of minimally invasive surgery;
• attract additional R&D and equipment investment from imaging equipment manufacturers; and
• drive demand for and investment in improved imaging agents and related informatics technology.

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SALEM – On May 3, the Hawthorne Hotel and the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem will host a one-day conference exploring the intersection of the innovation and creative economies, entitled: The Innovation Agenda – Growing the Creative Economy. The conference is being supported by a $20,000 award from the Innovation Institute’s Regional Priority Fund.

The conference will feature Professor Edward Glaeser from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard as the keynote speaker.

The morning session will also feature a “perfect brainstorm,” moderated by Editor George Donnelly of the Boston Business Journal, with Michael Goodman, the director of economic and public policy research at the University of Massachusetts’ Donahue Institute, John Schneider, vice president of MassINC, Beth Siegel, president and co-founder of Mt. Auburn Associates, and Dan L. Monroe, executive director and CEO at the Peabody Essex Museum. 

For more information, call  1-888-832-3857 or visit www.creativeeconomy.us

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