Internet Update
October 2003
Creating Research Jobs on Ohio's Third Frontier
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When Jenny Barger graduated
from Wright State in June, she was confident about her prospects in the
job market. In fact, she had a job lined up since April. It promised to
be a good job, a high-tech job with a future, the kind of job that Governor
Bob Taft believes will transform Ohio's economy.
A Celina native, Barger pursued a new career option for Wright State biology
majors -- bioinformatics
- which uses the latest advances in information technology to manage the
ever-growing mass of biological data generated since the sequencing of
the human genome.
"Dr. Dan Krane told us bioinformatics would be the next big thing,
it would go places," Barger recalls.
Two days after graduation, she began full time work with Acero,
a Cleveland-based software company. Acero is the developer of the Genome
Knowledge Platform, a powerful bioinformatics tool that enables scientists
to share staggering amounts of data within and between research organizations.
Barger's first assignment was setting up the software at the University
of Cincinnati's Genome Research Institute (GRI),
hub for the regional
research collaboration that includes Acero, Procter & Gamble,
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and Wright State University.
To Governor Bob
Taft, the collaboration evolving around GRI points the way to
a new frontier in Ohio's economic development. Ohio's first economic frontier
was agriculture, and its second was manufacturing. The Third Frontier,
according to the Governor's vision, is the "knowledge economy."
"We've lost more than 100,000 manufacturing jobs in recent years,"
Taft explains. "Our per capita income was growing before the recession,
but it was growing at a slower rate than other states. If we're going
to preserve quality of life and a vibrant economy, we have to accelerate
the transition of our economy to a more dynamic one based on research
and innovation."
Accelerating that transition is Taft's top priority. In 2002 he launched
the Third Frontier
Project, which will invest $1.6 billion in state funds over the
next decade to spur Ohio's knowledge economy. Part of the money comes
from Ohio's share of the tobacco settlement; part of it comes from capital
and general revenue funds. On November 4, Ohio voters will be asked to
approve Issue 1,
which will authorize $500 million in state bonds to finance additional
Third Frontier initiatives.
The monies will be invested strategically in high-tech fields such as
bioscience, fuel cells, and information technology, which have strong
potential for commercialization and job development. Ohio's research universities
bring valuable intellectual capital to the venture, and various Third
Frontier programs encourage new collaborations between universities and
the private sector.
"The state can provide funding and overall leadership," Taft
says, "but ultimately, we need our universities to focus on research
and development relevant to the knowledge economy - helping new businesses
to start up, encouraging faculty to participate in new businesses where
appropriate, and also working with large established companies to help
them innovate and stay ahead of the curve."
According to Jay Thomas, Ph.D., Wright State's Associate Provost for Research,
state governments are beginning to see federally funded university research
as an engine for economic development.
"You can have someone start a small company in the community and
hire 10 or 25 people. That could be a source of high-tech, high-paying
jobs. Or you could have a university professor who aggressively develops
a research program that also hires 25 people," Thomas says.
"It's understood now that university-sponsored research programs
are part and parcel of economic development within the community,"
he continues. "University research programs create jobs in the same
way as more traditional start-ups."
Governor Taft expects the Third Frontier Project to bring additional federal
research funds to Ohio, which will provide more research and development
jobs. A longer-term benefit will be new Ohio businesses, large and small,
creating quality high-tech jobs like Jenny Barger's.
"Every year Wright State graduates a lot of talented people,"
the Governor says. "We want to keep those graduates here at home
by ensuring that Ohio remains an excellent place to work."
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