Science and Enterprise

Month: October 2010

  • Agriproducts Manufacturer Plans R&D Expansion

    Kemin Industries in Des Moines, Iowa said the company plans in the next five years to add six new manufacturing facilities, three new research facilities, and a new corporate headquarters building in Des Moines.  The company develops nutritional ingredients for foods, animal feeds, and pharmaceuticals based largely on its own research. The $30 million expansion…

  • Small Business Grants to Develop Personalized Cancer Tests

    20/20 GeneSystems Inc. in Rockville, Maryland said today that the company has received nearly $3 million in two grants from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to develop tests for helping oncologists predict the effectiveness of targeted cancer therapies. The grants were awarded under NCI’s Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) Program. 20/20 says more than 20…

  • Simple, Inexpensive Sensor Detects Shoe Bomb Chemical

    University of Illinois chemists in Champaign, Illinois have developed a simple sensor to detect an explosive used in shoe bombs, with the potential to be built into inexpensive devices for luggage and passenger screening at airports and elsewhere. Triacetone triperoxide (TATP) is a high-powered explosive that in recent years has been used in bombing attempts.…

  • MIT Innovation Center Awards Emerging Technology Grants

    The Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts today announced grants totaling $800,000 to 10 MIT research teams working on early-stage technologies. The Deshpande Center aims to act as a catalyst for innovation and entrepreneurship with grants that fund proof-of-concept explorations of emerging technologies. The 10 selected projects cover technologies including materials,…

  • Intel to Build New Oregon Plant, Upgrade U.S. Manufacturing

    Intel Corporation said today it will invest between $6 to $8 billion on new manufacturing technology in its American facilities. The plan includes a new fabrication plant — called a “fab” in the industry — in Oregon. As part of the plan, Intel will deploy a new 22-nanometer (nm) manufacturing process in several of its…

  • Business Incubator Spins Off Hand Hygiene Start Up

    HanGenix, a recently formed start up enterprise in Boston, Massachusetts, is the first company to be spun out of a new business incubator program from the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology (CIMIT), a consortium of teaching hospitals and engineering schools, also in Boston. HanGenix focuses on reducing hospital acquired infections (HAI) by…

  • Grant Funds Commercializing Alternative Cultured Pearls

    Florida Atlantic University’s Oceanographic Institute in Harbor Branch, Florida received a grant from the State of Florida to commercialize a process the institute developed for creating pearls. The process provides an alternative seeding method to grow or culture pearls in the queen conch, a threatened species found in Florida. Researchers at the institute discovered the…

  • Grant Awarded to Develop Blood Pathogens Diagnostics Device

    The U.S. Defense Medical Research and Development Program (DMRDP) awarded one of its Applied Research and Technology Development grants to Micronics Inc., a medical diagnostics device company in Redmond, Washington. The award, for $2.6 million, will develop the company’s system for point-of-care molecular diagnosis of infectious pathogens. In its announcement of research needs, DMRDP called…

  • University, Entrepreneurs Advance Biofuels for U.S. Military

    Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York joined today with two entrepreneurs to advance the use of biofuels by the U.S. armed forces as an alternative energy source.  The entrepreneurs, John Fox and Wayne Arden, have proposed producing biodiesel in Afghanistan as a way of reducing risks to American troops and building a new, sustainable industry…

  • Max Planck Institute, GSK to Collaborate on Diabetes Drugs

    The Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry (MPI) in Martinsried, Germany and the German subsidiary of pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) have agreed on a partnership to develop new drugs for the treatment of type 2 diabetes. Max Planck Innovation, MPI’s technology transfer organisation, says the agreement is worth several million euros and covers a three-year period.…