Lisa DiBella, a teacher at Duanesburg Central School District, finds her students pay a lot more attention when she gives them hands-on opportunities in the classroom.

It is one reason she attended today’s education and workforce development initiative at Tech Valley High School in Rensselaer, NY.

“Students are 10 times more attentive, and 10 times more engaged, when you add projects to their learning,” the sixth-grade science teacher said. Duanesburg is in rural Schenectady County in upstate New York.

DiBella was among the more than 100 educators and businesspeople who turned out for today’s event. The initiative, called Tech Valley Connection for Education, is led by GlobalFoundries and Albany’s Center for Economic Growth. It is a cooperative effort involving 13 New York counties, 111 districts and 345 schools.

The goal is to develop a national model that will better train students for college and the work force as more jobs require technical skills rooted in science, technology, engineering and math.

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Three Buffalo-area companies will participate in a statewide venture capital forum next week that connects early-stage companies with investors.

The three – AndroBioSys, GradFly and Isolation Sciences LLC – will be part of the 13th annual SmartStart UNYTECH Venture Forum on Wednesday and Thursday in Albany. A total of 23 companies were selected to participate.

The Albany-based Center for Economic Growth, which organizes the forum, said 285 companies have presented since the event’s inception. The center says that 62 of those companies have raised more than $500 million in equity financing and that more than $72 million of that amount was “directly attributable” to their participation in the forum.

AndroBioSys is a life sciences company; GradFly helps students showcase their technical projects in online portfolios; and Isolation Sciences makes technology for settings like laboratories.

The early-stage companies apply to be selected to make presentations at the SmartStart UNYTECH Venture Forum. Richard E. Honen, chairman of the forum and a partner at Phillips Lytle LLP in Albany, said this year’s presenters include biotech, medical device, clean technology and social media ventures.

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Albany, NY – The final slate of presenting companies has been chosen for the 13th Annual SmartStart UNYTECH Venture Forum, presented by the Center for Economic Growth (CEG) in Albany, NY. A total of 23 high-growth early stage companies will be featured, including ten from the Capital Region.

This year’s list includes Chef Key, Clipcentric, Ener-G-Rotors, Virtual Phantoms, Inc., Pipesnapper Welding Supply, Vital Vio, PayWithMe, Vulcan Technologies, My Music Machines, and Thermal Solution Resources that will present their business plan to the investment community on May 15-16th at the Desmond in Albany, NY.

“The collaboration of this forum is an important component to strengthening the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem in Upstate NY,” said F. Michael Tucker, President and CEO of the Center for Economic Growth. “By providing opportunities for connections and deal flow, this Venture Forum is an ideal platform for the movers and shakers in the start-up community. We are honored to play a key role in presenting this forum,” he concluded.

SmartStart UNYTECH is Upstate’s premier venture forum to highlight the best early stage companies to investors.  Since its inception, 285 high-quality companies have presented and 62 have raised more than $500 M in equity financing, including more than $72 M directly attributable to their participation in the forum.  

“The field of companies this year is strong and diverse, representing a broad range of market opportunities from biotech to medical devices to clean technology and social media.  It showcases the strength of the State’s research and entrepreneurial communities,“ said Richard E. Honen, Esq. Chairman of the SmartStart UNYTECH Venture Forum and a Partner at Phillips Lytle LLP.  

In addition to the company investment pitches, the two-day forum will feature panel presentations on topics such as the America Invents Act, Trends in Angel Funding, University Gap Funding, and more.  Dr. Timothy Killeen, President of the Research Foundation for The State University of New York & SUNY Vice Chancellor for Research will deliver opening remarks.

This event is sponsored by the following:

• Gold Sponsor: The Research Foundation for SUNY
• Silver Sponsors: Phillips Lytle LLP and Upstate Venture Association of New York (UVANY)
• Bronze Sponsors: Excell Partners, Heslin Rothenberg Farley & Mesiti, P.C., Hodgson Russ, NYS Science & Technology Law Center, Overit, Pam Silverstein, University at Buffalo, STOR
• Marketing/Supporting Sponsors: Business Incubator Association of NYS, Eastern NY Angels  (ENYA), Erie County IDA, High Technology of Rochester, MedTech, Rensselaer Technology Park and Emerging Ventures Ecosystem, Upstate Venture Connect, Venture Association NJ and Western New York Venture Association

For more information on this event, please visit www.smartstartvf.org. The event is open to the media, please contact Elena D’Agnese at 518-321-5268.

About the Center for Economic Growth:

The Center for Economic Growth (CEG) is a regional economic and business development organization dedicated to attracting high-tech talent and companies and to providing innovative services to bolster local businesses in New York state’s Capital Region and Tech Valley. CEG receives significant financial support from the NYS Foundation for Science, Technology and Innovation (NYSTAR), a public benefit corporation that helps grow New York’s innovation economy with its support of high technology development and commercialization through academic and business partnerships, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP). CEG serves as NYSTAR’s designated Regional Technology Development Center for Tech Valley, one of nearly 350 MEP locations across the country assisting local manufacturing and technology companies with generating new sales, creating stronger operational infrastructure and overcoming barriers to growth. CEG is based in Albany, N.Y. Visit www.ceg.org for more information.

About UNYTECH:

UNYTECH is a collaborative effort among leading research institutions in the Upstate New York region including Alfred University, Binghamton University, Cornell University, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Rochester Institute of Technology, Syracuse University, State University of New York, University at Albany, University at Buffalo, and University of Rochester, and regional economic development agencies and venture capital firms., Universities in Upstate New York contribute immensely to the intellectual capital and high technology economy of the region. The eleven participating universities together have research and development expenditures over $1 billion. Research carried out within these universities translates into commercially viable products and services.

Register
(no cost to participate)

Mike Lorelli, four-time private equity CEO and former PepsiCo division President will discuss private equity and how mid-sized companies can work with it.
 
Mike will explain the fundamentals of the private equity equation, from the vantage point of the limited partner, the private equity firm, the portfolio company executive and the seller of a business.

TROY — The region’s manufacturing sector has had good news in recent years with several smaller and one major manufacturers settling in the Capital District, but fostering a climate conducive to manufacturing throughout the country needs to be achieved, said a member of the president’s cabinet.

“Why has the president been so emphatic in regards to manufacturing?” asked Patrick D. Gallagher, the U.S. Undersecretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology and Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. “It’s two things: one was a long-standing trend and one was the searing experience of a major economic recession.” The undersecretary was the keynote speaker during the first Advanced Manufacturing Conference which continues at the Hilton Garden Inn today.

The recession, which was the most serious economic downturn since the Depression, caused the federal government to look at the causes and to compare the country to other nations, Gallagher explained. The government found that Germany and China, the economies of which have strong manufacturing sectors, weathered the economic storm more mildly. Countries like the U.S., which has an economy more heavily based on financial services, fared much less well.

This experience combined with a “trend,” that being a growing conversation about the importance of research and innovation, caused the president to bring attention to manufacturing — even bringing it to the fore during his State of the Union.

Presently, the government supports one third of all research and development and the private sector supports the rest. However, this is not equal across all R&D, said Gallagher — the government focuses its funding primarily on basic research, spurring the discoveries upon which new technologies are based. By contrast, the private sector tends to support late-stage product development, that is involved with bringing products to market. Of that, roughly 75 percent is supported by manufacturing-based companies, such as GlobalFoundries.

“This is why manufacturing was going to come into the conversation,” said Gallagher. “If you’re talking about the nation’s capacity to innovate, manufacturing is the single biggest player. […] We are talking about manufacturing as an innovation engine for the country.”

What the government needs to learn to do, he emphasized, is work more closely with the private-sector. Such a partnership is currently taking place at the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering in Albany.

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Patrick Gallagher stared through his safety glasses and into an Xbox Kinect. He began moving his arms, holding and moving an imaginary cardboard box in the air.

About eight feet away, in the same lab at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a robot named Motoman mirrored all of Gallagher’s motions—actually gripping a real cardboard box. When Gallagher threw his arms far apart, so did Motoman, dropping the box.

Motoman and Gallagher, who is among the nation’s highest-ranking scientists, were not physically connected in any way.

Theirs was a virtual Kinection, the combination of computer code and the motion-sensing Kinect, sold at Target for $100 (if you already have the Xbox gaming system).

Gallagher, director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, was the keynote speaker Tuesday night at a manufacturing conference of 200 executives, government officials and academics in Troy, NY.

Gallagher touted such cutting-edge automation—and he says it’s becoming increasingly affordable and accessible to small and mid-sized manufacturers, which are numerous in the Capital Region.

And that means a big change in the job market at a time when companies of all sizes are demanding smarter and more sophisticated employees than before, Gallagher said.

That trend was at the core of the so-called “skills gap” confronting many manufacturers today. It’s an issue the Troy conference, co-hosted by Rensselaer and the Center for Economic Growth, sought to attack.

“You’re quickly seeing that what was once the realm of the largest of the large manufacturers is now becoming commonplace in companies of all sizes,” Gallagher said in an interview. “This has been the Holy Grail of automation, to have people and machines working together. You’re at the front lines of the whole thing in this lab.

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After leaving the arsenal, Tom initially joined the CEG in November 1999 as a Lean Enterprise Program Director.  During the ensuing eight years, he focused on the advancement of manufacturing capabilities through the delivery of effective training and hands-on support at dozens of upstate New York firms involving many thousands of individuals at all organizational levels.  He also was the founder and director of the “Lean Users Network” created as a learning and support organization for leaders of continuous improvement efforts at companies throughout the Capital Region.   

Early in 2008, Tom moved to private industry in support of the lean enterprise goals of an aerospace/medical composite structures manufacturing firm in Bennington, VT.  While there, he provided wide ranging technical and administrative support including the coordination of lean planning and implementation activities.  He returned to the Center for Economic Growth in April 2013 as Project Director for Technology Services analyzing business processes and working with company representatives in the achievement of their performance goals.

Michael has more than 16 years experience ranging from engineering and product development to business development and operations.  Prior to joining CEG in 2013, he was director of an incubator program, an entrepreneur, and was a senior engineer at Boeing.  Michael earned a BS in mechanical engineering from North Dakota State University and a MBA from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.