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Top Iowa Universities team up to be at the forefront of bioscience innovations

forefront of bioscience automated farming equipment

Iowa has been viewed as a leader in bioscience innovation with the University of Iowa and the Iowa State University working together to produce a variety of agricultural solutions. Both universities have been awarded a two year see grant worth $50,000 as an initiative towards developing the projects which include seeing how gut bacteria treat chronic diseases, improving weather forecasts for precision agriculture and better preventative vaccines for livestock.

The grant is supported by the offices of the Vice President for Research at the University of Iowa and the Iowa State University. The aim was to encourage innovative research and development to take place, contributing to one of Iowa’s leading industries.

Marty Scholtz, University of Iowas vice president for research said ” these grants are an example of the potent impact faculty and universities can have when they work side by side. And it’s a testament to the common vision and passion that the University of Iowa and Iowa State University bring to the task of addressing the world’s most pressing challenges.”

Furthermore, Iowa State University’s vice president for research, Sarah Nusser commented, “the biosciences represent a significant growth engine for Iowa’s economy, and research is the fuel that drives this growth. This valuable program helps our institutions create an innovation ecosystem to accelerate identifying and translating scientific breakthroughs that ultimately lead to new commercialized bioscience technologies and innovations.”

Winning bioscience projects for 2019 include:

Treating chronic disease with immunotherapies developed from gut bacteria
Improving weather forecasts with better digital data
Better vaccines against swine and avian flu

Below are several Iowa universities currently tackling different challenges of tomorrow:

Iowa State University and the University of Iowa are creating joint team’s that’ll work together to use gut bacteria to produce better vaccines against avian/swine flu, improve weather predictions for precision farming, and treat chronic diseases.
Iowa State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine has been developing vaccines to eradicate and control animal ailments, while at the same time providing an ultra-modern teaching hospital. The college is also offering veterinary services that protect human and animal health by offering effective diagnostic testing to thousands of farmers each year.

To top it off, these universities leverage almost $1.5 billion in external funding each year and have efficient procedures in place for technology transfer, which when coupled together allow innovative technologies to move into commercialization faster.

Illinois R&D Tax Credit Program Changes 2019

Recently, the General Assembly approved a bill that would extend the life of Illinois’ R&D tax credit. For innovative industries, this means there are more opportunities to create apprenticeships and educational programs; which means more job openings.

The Senate Bill 1591 has already secured final approval from the General Assembly and awaits the Governor’s Signature to become law.

The new bill will see:

A 6.5% credit on increases in in-state Research and R&D expenses
The R&D credit will be extended until 2027;
The apprenticeship credit of up to $5,000 per worker will have a state-wide cap of $5 million a year.

In addition, the credit will only be eligible for qualified businesses in the state of Illinois that employ an apprentice who meets the requirements. Requirements to qualify as an apprentice include being;

A resident of Illinois;
At least 16 years of age;
Enrolled in a full-time apprenticeship program registered with the U.S. Department of Labor;
Employed in Illinois.

As of 2019, California and New York also have similar tax credits, however, they are permanent, offering firms doing business in those states the predictability and consistency needed to manage operations.

Indiana’s R&D tax credit legislation is also outstanding as it offers an astounding generous 15% tax break on new investments.

To find out more about your state’s legislation on the R&D Tax Credit contact us here today.

Efficient Robotics Launches Revolutionary NTP Screening Workstation that can Screen Millions of Biomolecules and Cells in Hours

Efficient Robotics has recently announced the revolutionary commercialization of its NTP (Nano Titer Pipe) Screening Workstation. The notion of inventing microfluidic systems has never been attempted successfully until now.

Compared to tradition systems this discovery will transform the production, development and distribution of automated microfluidic systems. NTP will be used for ultra-high optimization and analysis of microbial strains, proteins, antibodies, enzymes, cell lines, peptides and mammalian cells.

Through investing in R&D and combining a variety of expertise in biotechnological, sensor technology and mechanical engineering, Efficient Robotics managed to develop the practical NTP Screening Workstation.

Efficient Robotics, founded in 2012, is one of the largest players in developing and commercializing microfluidic systems for chemical, biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries.

The incredible increase in systems throughout coupled with the reduction of required quantities of reagents is what improves the efficient of NTP screening.

President of Efficient Robotics, Dr. Marc Koltermann said “after 15 years of dedicated development efforts, the biotechnology industry now has a commercial microfluidic technology which can process in a serial manner millions of droplets per day including droplet inoculation and precise incubation, assay addition, and incubation as well as sensitive detection and selection.

Efficient Robotics’ NTP Workstation can optimize up to 10 million cells and biomolecules within hours compared to traditional systems that would take weeks and sometimes months.

AMERICAN Flow Control to Open Crawfordsville Research and Development Facility

Alabama based company AMERICAN Flow Control, the valve and hydrant division of AMERICAN Cast Iron Pipe Company, has formed a new company that will be dedicated to research and innovation.

The near company called AMERICAN Innovation LLC plans to invest in a new Indiana based R&D facility that will cost $9 – $12 million. Division sales manager, John Hagelskamp, said that the facility “will expand our research and design functions, allowing us to fast track innovations to get products to market more quickly.”

The facility will be built on 17 acres with both indoor and outdoor product testing taking place. It will also include the latest industry related equipment and technologies and for developing new products. The central Indianapolis location of the facility also making it easily accessible to several engineering schools. Hagelskamp also noted that the Crawfordsville, Indiana location was chosen due to “its easily accessible location and proximity to several major engineering schools.”

According to the company’s officials, the new facility will hire up to eight R&D professionals, including technicians and engineers by the end of 2020. AMERICAN Innovation LLC’s job creation plans have attracted a $130,000 conditional tax credits from the Indiana Economic Development Corporation.

Construction of the AMERICAN Flow Control Center for Innovation Excellence is due to begin towards the end of the year and completed in mid-2020.

Borden Dairy Company Makes a Comeback with a New R&D Center

Founded more than a Century ago, Borden Dairy Company has re-emerged with new leadership, ownership, a focus on its people, a confident vision to regain its position as the undisputed front-runner in the dairy sector, and a new research and development center that will allow them to launch new, groundbreaking products.

As you may remember, Borden is a legacy dairy firm, credited with inventing the use of glass milk bottles more than 130 years ago and also being the first American Dairy Company to utilize the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Inspection Shield back in the 1960s.

As it makes a comeback, the new CEO at the company is Tony Sarsam, who boasts more than 30 years of experience in the food sector having worked with companies such as Nestle and PepsiCo. Before taking on Borden, he was the CEO at Ready Pac Foods where he managed to guide the firm to an astounding 60 percent growth in less than five years.

Better yet, to help Borden reclaim its position, Sarsam re-established the sales and marketing functions, then added a new R&D team that will help the firm unveil new products.

At the center of this intense comeback is also Borden’s iconic spokes-cow, the Mascot Elsie, who has been awarded a new modern look. Elsie first appeared in 1936, and was soon after named by AdAge as one of the Top 10 Advertising Icons of the 20th Century.

“Despite not having made marketing investments in recent years, the Borden brand still holds a lot of equity, driven by over 150 years of dairy leadership,” said Joe DePetrillo, Borden’s Chief Marketing Officer. “Elsie remains a beloved and iconic representation of this proud heritage with people of all generations. For these reasons, we wanted our brand refresh to be evolutionary in nature rather than revolutionary. We were mindful to respect the familiarity and trust Elsie has earned, while ensuring that our brand stays relevant to today’s consumer.”

Little Caesars Testing Out a Plant-Based Pizza with Impossible Foods

After investing a lot of time and money in Research and Development (R&D), Impossible Foods has created the long-awaited meat-free sausage, and Little Caesars, the pizza chain, will be the first company to jump on the bandwagon and try its hand at plant-based proteins with its “Impossible Supreme” pizza.

Impossible Foods is the same company responsible for the plant-based Impossible Burger.

The new vegan sausage made its exclusive debut on May 20, 2019, as a topping on Little Caesars’ $12 pizza alongside green peppers, caramelized onions and mushrooms. It is currently available in 58 restaurants in four different locations including Naples, FL, Yakima, WA, Myers, FL, and Albuquerque, NM.

Little Caesars said it will test the product for four weeks, and if it’s successful, they’ll decide if they’ll roll it out to more markets around the nation. The pizza company started paying more attention to the plant-based protein trend in 2018 after realizing more meat-eaters were switching from animal-based products to vegetarian alternatives.

So, in an effort to wrap itself in its mission of attracting carnivores and vegetarians alike, Little Caesars partnered with Impossible Foods in October 2018 to create a meal boasting a plant-based protein.

“These kind of flexitarians have been growing in nature,” Ed Gleich, Little Caesars’ Chief Innovation Officer, told CNN Business. “They’re not hardcore ‘vegans or vegetarians,’ but they’re more adventurous in their choices. The Impossible Supreme pizza is designed to appeal to meat eaters, and isn’t vegan (it’s topped with cheese, along with the fake sausage and other items).

”At first, Impossible Foods proposed the plant-based beef they were using on their Burgers. However, Little Caesar told them that most clients order sausage-topped pizzas than beef-topped pizzas, so Impossible Foods went back to the drawing board and come up with a sausage alternative.

“Normally companies want to sell you the product they have,” said Gleich. “Not a product they’ve got to get out and put some R&D time in, and put resources against and develop.”

Israel – A new Hot Spot for Technology Innovation

Airline and technology giants have been focusing on investing in Israel as the hottest location for innovative R&D growth. The region has the largest number of startups per capita, with 1 startup per 1,400 people as a result of many technological industries collaboration with the Israeli Defence Force.

This phenomena has caught that eye of may key players within the tech and aviation industry from across the world striving for something that is beyond the normal scopes of entrepreneurship.

Asaf Toker, CEO of SeeVoov a virtual video based trip planning platform notes that “there is a culture in Israel for innovation, and since people see that many startups are being promoted and sold and doing great stuff, it gives you motivation to create more. “

An example being Waze, an Israeli startup, now a household name sold to Google in June 2013 for $USD1.3 billion.

CEO of Silentium, Yoel Naor believe that the innovative nature of Israel is because “Israeli society has a unique DNA that strives for solutions that are both creative and quick.” “Also, there’s a vast technological experience accumulated in the Israeli military, and combined with that supporting ecosystem, these create a unique fertile ground for innovative ideas.”

The Israeli defence force fosters a collaboration between older, more traditional organisations such as airlines, and younger and more agile startups. These relationship have been fostered, built upon and now developed making it a hit for companies like Apple, IMB and Microsoft to establish R&D centres in Israel. This forces older companies to allow to adapt to the malleable nature of innovation, while younger startups adapt to the unavoidable processes of big organisations. There is little doubt expansive nature of R&D being embedded in the Israeli culture is only going to grow exponentially, pushing innovation in every sector from machine learning to aerospace.

How Investing In R&D Can Resuscitate Economic Growth And The American Dream

The American engine of prosperity and progress has been in serious trouble over the last couple of years. Job creation has slowed down, causing a slow hollowing out of the middle class. In the meantime, economic and wealth opportunities are concentrated in a handful of coastal megacities, making people from the rest of the nation feel excluded.

How did our nation get here? And is there anything we can do to turn this tide?

In a new book (Jump-Starting America) and article posted on The Boston Globe, Simon Johnson and Jonathan Gruber provide answers to both questions. The book, in particular, presents an ambitious strategy that will boost public funding in Scientific Research and Development (R&D) in most societies around the nation.

Johnson with PIIE & MIT and Gruber with MIT argued that the U.S. can create more good jobs, grow faster, and sincerely spread equal opportunities than it has in the past if the administration is willing to change how and how much it invests in R&D.

The two MIT Economists further pointed out that the nation should place those investments equally and strategically across the U.S. and come up with an innovation dividend that will pay cash to Americans each year based on their success to invest the funds in the tech sector.

Johnson and Gruber claim doing so will result in a tech boom (similar to the one witnessed in the United States after World War II) and its benefits will be shared more broadly across the country.

“The United States needs once again to boost its leadership role in science. To do so we should recognize a fact that may be uncomfortable or some: More government spending on R&D will not fly politically if it all goes to the existing technological hubs of today,” wrote the two in the Boston Globe article. “The best technology jobs that we have today are concentrated disproportionately in a small number of superstar cities primarily on the West and East coasts: Boston, New York, Washington, Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.”

Bayer Launches a Cancer Research Site in Kendall Square in Cambridge

German-based pharmaceutical giant, Bayer AG, has been undergoing a major corporate transformation, internationally. Worldwide, the company will terminate a total of 12,000 jobs from across its global operations, including IT, Logistics, manufacturing, and support roles.

That said, at the same time, Bayer plans to expand and open a new cancer R&D facility in Cambridge, Massachusetts, adding jobs in the area. The company will pay the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) $100 million for a 12-year contract of approximately 62,100 square feet of office and lab space in a new construction in Kendall Square, which has lately become a center for pharmaceutical firms from all around the world.

In addition, according to Bayer executives, the company will spend a total of about $200 million, including the expense of building laboratories, acquiring R&D facilities, as well as staff wages & benefits.

From the current 20 employees in Cambridge, Bayer plans to add 75 new staff to the new facility when it opens in 2021 and double the numbers the following year. Half the workforce will be researchers working to create targeted cancer therapies, whereas the rest will be a variety, including data scientists.

According to Joerg Moeller, Executive Vice President and Head of Global Research and Development for Bayer, this significant Cambridge expansion is part of Bayer’s strategy to move most of its R&D efforts outside of Germany.

“I was first in Boston in ’89, and at that time, Cambridge looked very different,” Moeller told The Boston Globe. “If you look at it now, it is basically, in my view, together with the San Francisco area, probably [one of] the two preeminent innovation hot spots on this planet.”

Metal Powder Products Beefs Up Its Indiana Operations

According to a report released by Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IDEC), Metal Powder Products (MPP), a global provider of custom-engineered powder metallurgy product solutions, has decided to relocate its operation from Solon, Ohio, to a new facility in Hamilton, Indiana by 2020, creating around 80 jobs in the process.

The Noblesville-based metal parts manufacturer currently employs more than 350 associates in its Washington and Noblesville County Operations, and more than 1,100 overall in China and the United States.

According to the release, MPP has already employed 51 individuals as part of this transition and is planning on adding 29 more over the next two years. They (MPP) are currently hiring for expert labor positions. In fact, they expect the new Indiana division to be fully operational this Spring.

“We are very excited with regard to the move to Noblesville, and the state of Indiana and city of Noblesville have been exceptionally helpful during this process,” said Dennis McKeen, Chief Executive Officer of MPP. “MPP sees a very bright future for our MIM operations with very rapid growth.”

MPP will invest $1.5 million to re-purpose a 60,000 square foot facility at 14670 Cumberland Road and acquire new equipment.

When the site is ready, MPP plans on using it as its Metal Injection Molding (MIM) manufacturing division. 40,000 square foot of the facility will be utilized for manufacturing whereas the remaining 20,000 square foot will become space for offices and Research & Development (R&D) activities.

“Indiana has a strong reputation for making products that power our world, and we’re also developing new solutions and advancing innovative technologies that are driving industries forward,” said Elaine Bedel, president of the Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC). “With a fiscally-sound, pro-growth business climate and talented workforce, global businesses like MPP have the confidence to expand their capabilities here and create new, skilled jobs for Hoosiers.”

In 2018, the IEDC offered MPP up to $600,000 in training grants and conditional tax credits based on the firm’s job creation strategies. Duke Energy and the city of Noblesville have offered MPP incentives as well.