Connecticut Technology Council

Gov. Malloy: Bioscience in Connecticut Moves Forward

(FARMINGTON, CT) – Governor Dannel P. Malloy today signed new legislation creating a $200 million Bioscience Innovation Fund during a ceremonial event at the University of Connecticut Health Center (UCHC). The fund will make investments over the next 10 years in the form of grants, equity investments, loans and loan guarantees to foster innovation in smaller companies.

“Over the last two and a half years, we’ve taken great steps forward in reinventing our economy,” said Governor Malloy. “With the addition of Jackson Laboratories and the investments we are making in our flagship university, we are positioning Connecticut to be a leader in the creation of 21st Century jobs. The Bioscience Innovation Fund will allow us to build on the tremendous progress that’s being made across our state. Little by little, we are turning around years of stagnation and growing jobs for our residents.”

“This project is not only creating jobs, but is creating energy and a momentum that will put Connecticut on track to regain our legacy of economic leadership and innovation,” Lt. Governor Wyman said. “The emerging bioscience industry plays to all of Connecticut’s strengths, and these are the tools and the resources we need to take advantage of those assets for generations to come.”

“The Bioscience Innovation Fund will provide the means to support the translation and commercialization of cutting edge science in such sectors as therapeutics, diagnostics, medical devices, bioinformatics and testing,” said Claire Leonardi, CEO of Connecticut Innovations, the organization that will administer the fund. “This is a very exciting time for bioscience as the cycle of discovery is ever more rapid. On behalf of CI, I’d like to thank the governor for recognizing the opportunity to build on Connecticut’s incredible bioscience assets. The industry’s future will be driven by innovation, and the fund’s investments will be a catalyst for that growth.”

Prior to the bill signing, the Governor joined legislative and University leaders on a tour of Bioscience Connecticut construction progress at UCHC.

Construction has been underway for the last year at the UConn Health Center to fulfill all aspects of Bioscience Connecticut – a forward-thinking plan championed by Governor Malloy and approved by the General Assembly in 2011 to create thousands of construction and related jobs in the short term and generate long-term, sustainable economic growth based on bioscience research, innovation, entrepreneurship, and commercialization.

“The new Bioscience Connecticut fund will build upon the significant investment the state has already made in the UConn Health Center and Jackson Labs,” said Commissioner Catherine Smith of the Department of Economic and Community Development. “The fund will promote economic development by allowing investments in translational research, emerging technologies and new companies. It is a terrific example of how Governor Malloy’s economic development strategy works: combining the resources of the state, the private sector, and our research universities to enhance our position in the bioscience sector and establish Connecticut as a global destination for leading edge medical innovation.”

In the year following its groundbreaking last June, all aspects of Bioscience Connecticut have moved forward on time and on budget. Of note, the project has created about 700 construction and related jobs on the UConn Health Center campus in its first year, including higher-than-required averages for small and minority business participation and 82 percent of all work going to Connecticut-based contractors. The number of construction jobs will rise significantly over the next three years.

“As we move forward with this exciting project, we remain enormously appreciative of the support and confidence entrusted to us from Governor Malloy and the General Assembly,” says Dr. Frank M. Torti, the Health Center’s executive vice president for health affairs and dean of the UConn School of Medicine.

UConn President Susan Herbst noted the vital connection between Bioscience Connecticut, the Bioscience Innovation Fund and Next Generation Connecticut legislation approved this past legislative session that will greatly expand educational opportunities, research, and innovation in the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) disciplines at UConn over the next decade.

“The University is deeply grateful to Governor Malloy and the General Assembly for their recognition of the University’s role in economic and workforce development,” she added. “There is strong data to support that these initiatives will work. For example, by investing STEM, Next Generation Connecticut will generate $146 million per year in new research expenditures and $285 million in new business activity in Connecticut. In addition, it will create 4,050 permanent new jobs and 30,000 total construction jobs through 2024. This is a model that has worked in other states and is bound for success in Connecticut – along with many other facets of the Governor’s economic development plan.”

In addition, the Governor noted the progress of the new Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine, which broke ground in January and is on schedule for occupancy in the fall of 2014. The 189,000-square-foot facility will house research laboratories, offices for scientists and administrators, conference areas to support scientific collaboration, and leading-edge genome analysis technology.

“We are proud to be here and proud to be helping Connecticut build a stronger life sciences industry,” said Mike Hyde, Vice President for External Affairs and Strategic Partnerships as the Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine’s. “Meaningful partnerships with institutions of higher learning will allow us to tap into the best minds in the state, so that we can make the medical advancements that will have a direct impact on people’s lives.”

Scientists at JAX Genomic Medicine are building collaborations among doctors, researchers and the biomedical industry to bring research findings into the clinical setting. Their goal is to discover precise genomic solutions to disease, improving care, lowering costs and increasing life span and health span.

The Laboratory has awarded bid packages totaling $108 million for the construction of the new facility. Of that figure, 87 percent – more than $94 million – has been awarded to companies headquartered or with regional offices in Connecticut. JAX has awarded nearly $30 million in contracts to small businesses and minority-owned companies.

Within 10 years, JAX Genomic Medicine will employ at least 300 people. Already, the number of employees has reached 46, including more than 30 principal investigators and scientific staff, all working in temporary space on the UConn Health Center campus. More than two dozen additional employment applications and contracts are in process. About 16 scientific and administrative positions have been filled by residents of Connecticut.

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For Immediate Release: September 4, 2013

Contact: Andrew Doba
[email protected]
860-524-7308 (office)
860-770-8090 (cell)

Twitter: @GovMalloyOffice
Facebook: Office of Governor Dannel P. Malloy

State's Quest To Be 'On The Bioscience Map' Progresses

FARMINGTON — Walking through the University of Connecticut Health Center campus Tuesday, George Karsanow, the health center's director of construction, pointed out markers of progress.

The 307,000-square-foot ambulatory care building is scheduled to be completed by fall 2014. The new tower for the hospital — which will include more than 160 new beds, a new emergency department and a new operating room — is on schedule to be done by 2016.

And nearby, the Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine, under construction and more than a year from completion, already has hired about 70 people.

That all these projects are on pace is important: The state has put a lot of money into them. The various UConn Health Center construction projects are part of the state's $864 million Bioscience Connecticut Initiative. To entice the Maine-based Jackson Laboratory to build a genetics research facility at the UConn Health Center campus, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy pushed the state to lend Jackson $291 million.

"We are on the bioscience map in a big way," Malloy said Tuesday, citing the work going on at UConn, the progress Jackson is making, as well as research at Yale, Wesleyan and various independent startup companies.

The next challenge, Malloy said, is to make sure that the state can take advantage of the innovations that come out of all this research. The Bioscience Innovation Act, which Malloy is scheduled to sign Wednesday, is designed to help in that regard. It will fund $200 million to various bioscience projects over the next 10 years, beginning next year.

"What we're trying to do is capitalize on existing strength in bioscience in Connecticut and build on that," he said.

There will be a lot of great ideas coming out of the universities and private sector in the next several years, he said. The trick will be bringing them to market.

"If you're at MIT, Harvard or any major academic institution, there are going to be people knocking on your door, trying to get your idea into a bottle," Malloy said. "And that's what we're trying to do."

An advisory committee will choose the projects that the Bioscience Innovation Act will fund — awarding $10 million the first two years, $15 million for the third and fourth years, and $25 million for years five through 10, to projects that show commercial promise.

Anyone, from individuals and small independent companies to universities in Connecticut, will be able to compete for the funds. It's the kind of commitment, said Michael Hyde, vice president of Jackson, that has helped Jackson recruit some of the top scientists from around the world. About 50 of the people the company has hired are already doing research in temporary space on the UConn Health Center campus. The company has also leased some lab space from the university.

In July, UConn and Jackson Laboratory made their first joint academic appointment: Dr. Reinhard Laubenbacher was hired as the co-director of the health center's new Center for Quantitative Medicine. Over the next several years, the two institutions expect to bring in nine more joint recruits.

Frank Torti, the health center's vice president of health affairs, said Tuesday that the new facilities and renovations will also help attract some of the best research talent to UConn. Physical space can affect how scientists work together, he said.

Torti said several floors of laboratories on the campus are being renovated and redesigned to cut down on closed spaces. That, he said, will encourage more conversations among the scientists. Chance encounters and casual conversations, he said, are often more conducive to innovations than formal meetings.

"We think these informal settings are where the creativity happens," Torti said.

 

Follow this link to read William Weir's original article and view a slideshow of related pictures at the Hartford Courant.

Schools Tackle Science Teacher Exodus

Read this fascinating article by Melissa Bailey about STEM education in New Haven, Connecticut, and the US here at the New Haven Independent.

 

New Haven’s public schools have tapped two new “teacher mentors” to help 18 newly hired science teachers, as part of an effort to stop science teachers from leaving the system in droves.

Richard Therrien, the school system’s science supervisor, outlined the problem—and introduced two new people aiming to help fix it—at an orientation session for new science teachers at Hill Regional Career High.

This year, 18 of 120 science teachers are new to the district—the highest number in five years, according to Therrien.

Teacher turnover among science teachers has remained high in New Haven, reflecting a national challenge that’s particularly acute in urban districts. New Haven is beginning to examine the problem and look for solutions as part of a $53 million federally backed effort to improve the way it develops and retains teachers.

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Therrien has been battling attrition for years. This year, he offered a new solution: “teacher mentors” whose sole job will be to support new science teachers. The mentors, Matthew Erickson of Edgewood School and Lana Rowan of Wilbur Cross High (pictured), introduced themselves Thursday to the group.

“I’m your resource,” Erickson said.

Rowan will spend a lot of time helping six new teachers at Cross. Erickson will focus on middle school. They’ll be available to take phone calls, help teachers plan lessons, or even help out in a struggling teacher’s classroom for a week. The new “mentor” jobs are being paid for through the $53 million federal Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) grant, which aims in part to create new ways for teachers to take leadership roles without leaving the classroom to be administrators. Rowan and Erickson won’t grade their mentees through the formal teacher evaluations; they’ll only support them.

As part of the $53 million plan, New Haven will begin studying exactly which teachers are leaving city schools, and why. The district plans to start issuing exit polls to departing teachers, according to New Haven teachers union President David Cicarella.

The mentoring duo gave out their cell phone numbers before rushing back to teacher leadership boot camp at the Yale Law School, also paid for by TIF.

Therrien said new science teachers they’re helping can feel isolated: One new teacher, for example, will be the only person teaching physics at Wilbur Cross. He hopes the extra support helps teachers make it past the two-year mark, which so many have failed to do.

If the new mentors succeed at their job, he said, they’ll eliminate the need for the job, because teachers will stay on with the district, eliminating the need for newcomers.

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A school “is not a factory. It should be more like a family. If you’ve got teachers coming out every year in large numbers, that’s disruptive,” [Richard M. Ingersoll, a professor at the University of Penn Graduate School of Education] argued.

High turnover also has a ripple effect across a school that hurts student learning, argues Susanna Loeb of the Stanford Graduate School of Education. Loeb and colleagues conducted 850,000 observations of students in the 4th and 5th grades of New York City schools over the course of eight years. They found that a school’s teacher turnover rate was a significant factor —about as significant factor as poverty—hurting student test scores.

Ingersoll said bringing in mentors, as New Haven is doing, is a good start to addressing the problem. “Its a big need,” he said. Science teachers in particular get so much training in subject knowledge that they have less preparation on how to teach. For 40 percent of science teachers across the country, Ingersoll said, “Day 1 was the first day they had taught teenagers.”

Cody, the former Oakland teacher, created a mentoring program there to address a high churn of science teachers in a small, 10-person department. The program paired experienced science teachers with rookies, built a “family” feeling within the department, and cut turnover to zero, he said.

Ingersoll said his research backs up the notion that mentoring works. It’s “very important to have had some support, some mentoring, some collaboration time” with other teachers. “Those teachers who get that are much more likely to stick around.”

Therrien said he’s hopeful about the year ahead: “We had a great group of applicants this summer, especially in middle school and certain subjects, more than usual, so I remain very optimistic about the potential of those 18 teachers to really help students learn science.”

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Schools Tackle Science Teacher Exodus

UConn Scientist Working on a New Way to Repair Knees

Dr. Cato T. Laurencin had already earned a PhD in biomedical engineering when he started a fellowship in sports medicine, a job that got him involved in fixing lots of torn knee ligaments known as ACLs.

“It just seemed to me that there might be a better way to be able to approach this,” said Laurencin, now a professor of orthopaedic surgery and director of the Institute for Regenerative Engineering at the UConn Health Center.

Fixing a torn ACL -- the anterior cruciate ligament, which keeps the shin bone from sliding out in front of the thigh bone -- generally requires implanting tissue from another part of the body. What if, Laurencin wondered, you could instead engineer a ligament that would regenerate?

Read the rest of the story in an article by Arielle Levin Becker at the CT Mirror.

A Call to Research Scientists and Engineers

Advanced Research Mentorships (ARM) with Glastonbury High School

Advanced Research Mentorship (ARM) provides an outstanding opportunity for practicing scientists and engineers to collaborate on authentic research studies with outstanding high school students. ARM is a non-traditional, non-lecture course that is designed to allow students to work independently to develop skills in all aspects of science including problem formulation, method design, data collection and data analysis. Students will improve techniques in acquiring, understanding and evaluating scientific literature. Scientists use a variety of methods to effectively communicate scientific findings. Students will have numerous opportunities to deliver oral presentations, to prepare poster presentations and to write scholarly scientific papers. Upon completion of one or more research studies, students will present their work in selected venues, such as the GHS Research Proposal Defense, The Connecticut Junior Science and Humanities Symposium, The Southern Connecticut Invitational Science and Engineering Fair and The Connecticut Science and Engineering Fair and the 2014 GHS Science Symposium.

Contact: Diane C. Pintavalle, [email protected]
Instructor, AP Biology & Advanced Research Mentorship, Glastonbury High School

White Coats For First Class Of Medical Students At Quinnipiac

NORTH HAVEN — Before taking the Hippocratic oath, the first students of Quinnipiac University's new medical school received their stethoscopes and white coats Friday.

"Today you are going to put on your first white coat, and in many ways, you are never going to take it off," said Dr. Jessica Israel, keynote speaker for the school's white coat ceremony — a ritual common at medical schools to welcome the newest class of medical students. "The coat you're wearing today, it goes with you everywhere."

Chosen from about 2,000 applicants, the 60 students of the Frank H. Netter MD School of Medicine will begin classes Monday.

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Quinnipiac's medical school is the third in the state. The UConn School of Medicine opened in 1968, and Yale's was founded in 1813. Made possible with a $100 million investment, much of which came from Edward and Barbara Netter, the school is named for Edward Netter's first cousin, Frank Netter, who was a renowned medical illustrator.

The 145,000-square-foot building, on Quinnipiac's North Haven campus, was completed earlier this year. Lahey said the school it plans to choose 90 students out of what officials estimate will be 3,500 applications for next year's class. Within four years, class size is expected to increase to 125.

Quinnipiac officials have designed the school's curriculum and recruited students with the idea of producing more than its share of primary care physicians. Quinnipiac's goal is to have 50 percent of its graduates choose primary care; nationally, about 20 percent of graduating medical students go into primary care.

The goal is a response to the medical community's call for more primary care doctors as a corrective to the current physician shortage, which is expected to get worse as the baby boomer generation gets older and as more people are able to get health care under the Affordable Care Act.

The Association of American Medical Colleges has predicted that by 2020, there will be a shortage of more than 90,000 doctors, about half of them primary care doctors.

Quinnipiac officials said that, when recruiting for the current class, they often leaned toward somewhat unconventional applicants who might be more inclined to go into primary medicine, including older people and applicants with non-science backgrounds.

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Read more at William Weir's article online at the Hartford Courant.

From Secretary to Magnetic Particle Inspection

Thefollowing is an excerpt from an article by Bill Fallon that originally appeared in the Fairfield County Business Journal.

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Edwina Lucenius was a successful executive secretary in New Jersey when family obligations brought her home to Stratford. There, she found her skills in low demand and she sought a different direction.

She found a very different direction.

A year after entering Housatonic Community College’s advanced manufacturing program, Lucenius today works for RBC-Heim Bearings in Fairfield where she is involved in the nondestructive testing of metals, specializing in magnetic particle inspection. She works with microscopes, high-tech fluids and black lights.

Lucenius had been told manufacturing was a man’s world — she’s the first female to graduate the Housatonic program, which itself is a year old — but has found the reality more nuanced. She said, yes, manufacturing is dominated by men, but she also said, “Everything depends on the people. At Heim Bearings there is an incredibly open culture and an international mix of men and women.”

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Read more about Lucenius in at westfaironline.com and click here to read more about Housatonic Community College's Advanced Maufacturing Program.

Jackson Lab, UConn Scientists Secure $3.2 Million Grant

Researchers from Jackson Laboratory and the University of Connecticut have received a $3.2 million grant that will help them learn more about what causes bone diseases like osteoporosis, officials from both institutions said Tuesday.

The project will be one of the first between the university and the Maine-based nonprofit organization, which is receiving millions in aid from the state of Connecticut for a facility on the UConn Health Center's campus in Farmington.

The five-year grant, from the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, will help scientists explore what happens to the bone growth and development in a mouse if that mouse is missing specific genes.

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"You're trying to create an area here where bright people from all over the world converge to solve fundamental problems in biology and medical science," [Jackson Lab VP Mike] Hyde said. "I think this was the dream of the state when they proposed this partnership, to jumpstart the bioscience sector."

 

Read the complete article by Wes Duplantier in the Hartford Courant.

Going Global: High School Students from China and Connecticut to Launch New Business

 

 

 

Twenty high school students from Shanghai, China, and 20 high school students from Wallingford, Conn. will participate in Junior Achievement’s (JA) first-ever Global Exchange Program, sponsored by United Technologies Corporation (UTC). The program will provide students with engaging, academically challenging, and experiential learning sessions that focus on American and Chinese business, innovation, entrepreneurism, ethics and leadership.

The multi-year program will begin the morning of Monday, Aug. 5, at Yale University in New Haven, Conn., with an opening ceremony that will kick-off a week of lectures, seminars, and workshops featuring Yale faculty and business leaders, as well as guest speakers from UTC. In addition to participating in lectures and workshops, the students will visit the New York Stock Exchange in New York City and ESPN Headquarters in Bristol, Conn. Throughout the week, the students will begin to develop ideas for a joint venture that they will plan and operate throughout the 2013-2014 school year.

 

Read the entire story from CT Releases here.

UConn to Supercharge Energy Research Efforts

The University of Connecticut will seek to advance affordable and sustainable energy technologies with the help of a new energy research institute with Fraunhofer USA announced today by state and international officials.

The Fraunhofer Center for Energy Innovation (CEI) will research energy production, storage, and distribution, according to Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's office, which announced the development in conjunction with German Consul General to the U.S. Rolf Schütte, Fraunhofer USA President Georg Rosenfeld, UConn President Susan Herbst and Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Commissioner Daniel C. Esty.

CEI will be established at UConn's Depot Campus with plans to relocate to the school's technology park in 2015.

The center will be led by Prabhakar Singh and will work with industry and academics to develop efficient and cost-effective energy conversion and storage systems. The CEI will focus particularly on metals, ceramics, micro-and nanostructures, as components for fuel cells and electrolyzers.

"With the resources, talent, and expertise of UConn and Fraunhofer, we expect to see technological breakthroughs that will help deliver a cheaper, cleaner, and more reliable energy future for Connecticut, the nation, and the world," Malloy said in a statement.

 

Read the rest of this unattributed article from the Hartford Business Journal on their website.

 

More information can be found at Fraunhofer's website.

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