URI touts economic development effort

PR maven Andy Cutler sends word of some forward-movement on the economic development front.

The URI Commission for Innovation and Research, an effort to strengthen the University of Rhode Island's place as a nationally competitive public research university and a key in the state's effort to foster an innovation economy, was initially conceived as a recommendaton by the Rhode Island Science and Technology Advisory Council (STAC).

Today, former RI Supreme Court Justice Robert G. Flanders Jr., who chairs the commission, announced the membership of the panel. 

Appointees include Dr. James Coleman, Vice Provost for Research at Rice University;  President and Chief Executive Officer of Women and Infants Hospital Constance Howes; respected Rhode Island business and civic leader Carol Grant; University of Rhode Island Vice President for Research and Economic Development Dr. Peter Alfonso; Dr. Margaret S. Leinen, Chief Science Officer for Climos; Saul Kaplan, Executive Director of the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation and Executive Counselor to the Governor on Economic Growth and Community Development; Dr. David Hibbitt, former Chairman of ABAQUS, Inc, located in Providence.

Also among those appointed to the commission is Lord Alec Broers, a well known and respected scientist and research administrator in the United Kingdom. In addition to spending nearly 20 years with IBM here in the United States, Lord Broers is the former head of the Engineering Department at Cambridge University and Vice Chancellor of  that University.   His ongoing activities include chairing the science and technology committee of the British House of Lords and presenting the prestigious BBC Reith lectures last year on “The Triumph of Technology.”

 

. . . .

  

The commission will formally begin its work in September and will report their findings and recommendations to the governor and the Rhode Island General Assembly by September of 2008.