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>>Theresa Bierer: Our next story focuses on another partnership, this one about advancing
the technological brain power on campus. Here at NACET, the Northern Arizona Center
for Emerging Technologies in Flagstaff, representatives from Northern Arizona University are meeting
with community members who can help them transform their science to marketable applications.
>>Laura Huenneke: This partnership is crucial for the university because it allows us to
reach out to the community in a way that frankly none of us were trained to do. Faculty members
are selected and hired and nurtured for their intellectual power and their teaching abilities.
But not for how to start business or how to recognize a commercializable opportunity,
the connections to the business community and to the region's economy is what the incubator
allows us to provide. >>Bierer: NACET is a business incubator with
an emphasis on technology startups, renewable energy and science. This focus makes NACET
an ideal place for NAU researchers to bring their ideas
>>Russ Yelton: Well it's a natural fit because in order for us to grow businesses we need
the technology, at NAU they need to take the technology that they are developing and get
it off the shelf and grow businesses, so it's a perfect combination. It also allows existing
businesses in flagstaff to meet faculty at NAU that may be able to help them further
develop their technologies and things they needed in their own businesses in order to
grow more jobs in Flagstaff. >>Bierer: These ideas support the university
initiative: NAU Ventures, designed to stimulate the local economy by bringing applications
from research to market. Professor Tim Porter is working to educate fellow academics on
this trend in higher education, hoping they'll embrace it
>>Tim Porter: For NAU it means that we teach our faculty to be more entrepreneurial, the
faculty can invent new knowledge, patent that new knowledge, start new companies license
that new knowledge and participate directly in the money that that new knowledge might
bring in, in the form of economic development. >>Bierer: Generating income is the topic du
jour with the state facing massive budget cuts to education
>>Porter: So it's up to the universities to try and diversify their own revenue stream.
If some of these new companies are successful or if some of these licensing agreements are
successful, there is another potential revenue stream for universities to rely on so there
is something in it for us >>Bierer: This event is called NAU2YOU with
consultants from NACET mentors, who assist entrepreneurs and new companies. The casual
environment fosters one on one interactions, helping new conversations along.
>>Michael Wagner: I mean I have spent my 30 year academic career so far at NAU being a
traditional academic, teaching, researching, writing papers, publishing. I think it's an
interesting opportunity to think about the possibility of an entrepreneurial model or
a commercial model. Maybe doing some of the things I do for the university in a more private
basis maybe on a bigger scale, more different kind of motivation, so that's what I am here
for. >>Bierer: The impetus for conversations like
these began about a decade ago, when voters passed the Growing Biosciences Initiative.
Generating tax revenue for Arizona's public universities and now with NACET in Flagstaff,
economic development in the sciences is being facilitated.
>>Yelton: So every six months we'll bring together faculty from the university, our
mentors, business people, and just let them cross pollinate ideas and learn and network
with other people that already exist in the community.
>>Bierer: A study released earlier this year shows employment in the biosciences is up
31% since 2002 a trend many in Flagstaff say they'd like to see continue.