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News Brunswick looks to Wisconsin as a model
July 2, 2009
Click here to read a story in the New Brunswick Business Journal about efforts in that Canadian province to model its economic development efforts after Wisconsin. Three New Brunswick Securities Commission member attended the Wisconsin Entrepreneurs' Conference in June.

Wisconsin Institute for Discovery's five main research themes revealed
July 1, 2009

Five proposals have been selected to form the "intellectual heart" of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, director John Wiley announced Tuesday.

WID is the public half of the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery and is joined by the private half, the Morgridge Institute for Research. Click here to read more.

Madison -- In both quantity and quality, Dean Paul Peercy wants to improve the workforce coming out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering.  Read more from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel here. This story appeared after the June 23 WIN-Madison meeting, where Peercy spoke on challenges facing engineering.

Eso-Technologies, a start-up company that has developed a monitoring device to reduce the risk of heart attacks for people undergoing surgery, is the Grand Prize winner in the 2009 Governor’s Business Plan Contest. The company has won $50,000 in cash and services. Click here to read a Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel story on the contest results.

By Tom Still
MADISON – Ben Hobbins didn’t win the statewide Governor’s Business Plan Contest in 2007, the year IronClad Soft Bait Brands competed with about 280 other entries. But like the patient fisherman he is, Hobbins refined his plan and kept casting his line in the water.

An entrepreneur who built the nation's biggest online arts retailer from a warehouse on Madison's east side will win the Ken Hendricks Memorial Seize the Day award.

Toni Sikes will receive the award, which celebrates entrepreneurial leaders who have been crucial to Wisconsin's economic growth, at the Wisconsin Entrepreneurs' Conference in Milwaukee on June 9 and 10.  Read full story from Milwaukee Journal Sentinel here.

ATLANTA – There are no plans to hang crepe inside the Georgia World Congress Center, but the 2009 BIO International Convention will take place here this week against the backdrop of the toughest economic times ever witnessed by this still-young industry.

An amendment to the 2009-2011 state budget bill passed 16-0 early Friday by the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee contains welcome proposals to stimulate the state’s tech-based economy, Tech Council President Tom Still said Friday. Click here to read a Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel story.

Twenty-eight entries from nine communities have advanced to the semi-final round of Dane County YES!, a new county-wide youth business plan contest, producers announced Wednesday.

Contestants were selected from first-round entries by...

A boot camp for entrepreneurs was held in Milwaukee on Feb. 25, where speakers covered topics ranging from how to lure investors and build sales to the business plan of the Grateful Dead. 

Read more from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel here.

Representatives of Eli Lilly will visit Madison this spring to meet with Wisconsin companies and researchers and to explore opportunities for strategic partnerships.

Those interested in learning more about this event, Lilly’s areas of core competencies and its investment interests should do the following:

Centrose, a Madison start-up focused on enhancing drugs biology, has it has raised about $2.1 million in angel investment funds, at a time when such funding is not easy to come by.

Read more from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Visit Centrose, LLC online.

UW System President Kevin Reilly is pulling together a high-profile group to uncover roadblocks that need to be removed and incentives that need to be put into place to move more university research into the hands of Wisconsin businesses and start-up companies. The announcement follows release of the Wisconsin Technology Council's report on "The Economic Value of Academic R&D in Wisconsin." Read more in this Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel story. Also, read this story in Biotech Transfer Week.

MADISON – Research and development spending by Wisconsin’s public and private colleges and universities totaled nearly $1.1 billion in the 2007 federal fiscal year, activity that created about 38,000 direct and indirect jobs. Click here to read a story in in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, and here to read a report by the Wisconsin Technology Network.

For an on-demand video overview of the report, click here.

Tech Council President, Tom Still, and Dane County YES! Coordinator, Ryann Petit-Frere, talk with WISC-TV's Neil Heinen about why and how the state's vast technology sector is poised to weather the current economic crisis and a new youth business plan contest in Dane County.

Click here to see For the Record.

MADISON - TomoTherapy Incorporated announced today that it has reduced its workforce by approximately 12 percent through a combination of layoffs and the elimination open positions.  Read more here.

SUPERIOR – The Lake Superior Angel Network will focus on making early stage investments in a multi-county region stretching roughly from Duluth, Minn., to Ironwood, Mich., about two-dozen investors and organizers agreed Tuesday in Superior.

MADISON – Businesses and civic groups in Wisconsin will be invited to take part in town-hall style meetings on the importance of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education efforts in their communities.

The series of public meetings, “Educating a Tech-Savvy Workforce,” is being produced by the Wisconsin Technology Council and the Wisconsin Innovation Network with the help of a core grant from the Kern Family Foundation.

MADISON – Students in Dane County high schools and middle schools are eligible to compete in a business plan contest to help them learn how science and technology innovations move from idea to market.

Patterned after the statewide Governor’s Business Plan Contest, Dane County Youth Entrepreneurs in Science – Dane County YES! – is being produced by the Wisconsin Technology Council with the help of a two-year grant from the Madison Community Foundation.

EAU CLAIRE – Citing his volunteer service to the Marshfield Clinic and the communities it serves, the Marshfield Clinic Heritage Foundation has singled out Mark Bugher for its highest annual award.

Click here to read an interview by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel with Virent Energy CEO Eric Apfelbach, who will speak Wednesday night at the Wisconsin Early Stage Symposium.

Recent a column by Tech Council president Tom Still on the Wisconsin Genomics Initiative, which will combine the resources of the Marshfield Clinic, the UW-Madison, the Medical College of Wisconsin and the UW-Milwaukee.  

Click here to read a Detroit News story on a major donation by Alfred Taubman to stem-cell research efforts at the University of Michigan. 

MADISON – Quincy Bioscience, a Madison, Wis., based biotechnology company that is developing health applications for a jellyfish-derived protein, extended its congratulations to a team of three researchers for their work leading to the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Osamu Shimomura, Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Mass., and Boston University Medical School; Martin Chalfie, Columbia University, New York, N.Y., and to Roger Y. Tsien, University of California San Diego in La Jolla, are winners of the 2008 prize. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said Tuesday the researchers are being recognized for their work in discovering, isolating, and utilizing a glowing protein in a species of jellyfish called Aequorea victoria that has become “a guiding star for biochemistry.” 

MADISON – Fifty-seven early stage companies applied for one of two chances to present to potential investors at the Wisconsin Early Stage Symposium, to be held Nov. 5-6 at Madison’s Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center.

The annual conference, which has existed under different names for more than 20 years, will feature the fourth annual “Elevator Pitch Olympics” for companies in a seed financing stage and the second annual Wisconsin Angel Network Early Stage presentation track for companies seeking angel investments beginning in the $500,000 range. About three-dozen companies will be selected to present in one track or the other.

Madison-based Stratatech Corp. said this morning it has successfully completed a clinical trial for a living human skin substitute. Click here to read a Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel story on the company's progress.

The appointment of Richard J. Leinenkugel as secretary of the state Department of Commerce brings a combination of historic Wisconsin roots and 21^st century business experience to a state agency that routinely deals with the state’s economic development challenges, Wisconsin Technology Council President Tom Still said Friday.

The growth of Epic Systems in Verona was profiled in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. Click here to read about a tech-based company Wall Street estimates is worth $1.2 billion.