Wednesday, December 15, 2010

The Heart of Pittsblog is Still Beating

After I got off of a plane last Friday, I looked at my calendar for 2010:  26 trips out of Pittsburgh, more or less.  Yikes.  No wonder blogging here has fallen off.  And 2011 is shaping up already to be just about as busy.

Once in a while, though, a ray of good news shines through the dirty skies of Pittsburgh (kudos to the PG, by the way, for being on top of this story).  A few weeks ago, I didn't do enough here to highlight a terrific $1mm grant that Innovation Works secured to bolster collaboration with tech transfer at CMU.  Today, I don't want to miss the chance to spotlight some good news for the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse:  a $500k grant from the Commonwealth to support a campus on the South Side, including a number of wet labs.  Much more money is needed to build out infrastructure for commercializable biotech and biomedicine in Pittsburgh, but every $500k helps.

Meanwhile, at my law school, we have hired a new Executive Director to lead Pitt's Innovation Practice Institute -- succeeding the founding ED, who is moving onward and upward (to Philly, unfortunately for us) -- and I will be stepping up as of Jan. 1 to become the IPI's Faculty Director.  In 2011, expect the IPI to participate even more fully in Pittsburgh's entrepreneurial space. 

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