A contingent of diplomats and business leaders from a variety of African nations will meet with Delaware legislators and visit agricultural, disease prevention, and environmental industry sites on a tour organized by World Trade Center Delaware.
The group is in the U.S. for the U.S.-Africa Business Summit 2017 in Washington D.C.
According to WTC officials, the African diplomats and business leaders will tour ILC Dover and the University of Delaware’s Lasher Labs today and will lunch at Legislative Hall with the presidents of Delaware State University and Tidewater Utilities, Inc. They will discuss collaborative research and standardization of environmental and food safety regulations.
The first WTC Delaware On the Road Program will provide grants to Delaware companies attending the U.S.-Africa Business Summit from June 13-16.
More than 1,000 officials with purchasing authority from the 54 African countries are expected seek products, services and technological solutions in agriculture, environment energy, transportation, infrastructure, education, IT and health.
This year, the WTC Delaware launched three new programs to help members take advantage of such opportunities, including the WTC Delaware Procurement Partners Program that brings procurement managers from American and international donor agencies to Delaware to train companies on how to find new contracting opportunities, to become registered bidders, and to respond to international tenders.
Since it opened in 1992, Delaware Technology Park in Newark, Del., has helped propel Delaware into the forefront of the life sciences, advanced materials, information technology and renewable energy industries.
The park is located not far from the University of Delaware campus. It was launched to provide space for startup companies that wanted research space near the UD campus. It is a non-profit partnership between UD, the State of Delaware and the private sector.
In the 25 years since it was founded, 100 companies have called the park home. They have directly or indirectly spurred the creation of 16,000 jobs.
“Delaware Technology Park has taken a patient and persistent approach to creating a high-impact, technology-based economy and a fertile research zone for Delaware,” says Mike Bowman, the park’s president since 1998 and, before that, its founding chairman.
Today, Delaware Technology Park is a complex of buildings that is home to about 1,000 employees, 54 companies and two research organizations. One is the Fraunhofer USA Center for Molecular Biotechnology, a developer of vaccines and a research center of Fraunhofer USA, which conducts applied R&D for customers to help close the innovation gap from the lab to the real market. The other is the Delaware Biotechnology Institute, which fosters academic-industrial research partnerships and works to support the local bioscience industry (from startups to multinationals) in partnership with the Delaware Bioscience Association.
In October 2016, Delaware Technology Park marked the next phase in its growth with the opening of an incubator for startup companies on the University of Delaware’s STAR (Science, Technology & Advanced Research) Campus in Newark. The incubator offers state-of-the-art laboratories and offices for emerging companies at rents lower than they could find elsewhere.
Despite being open less than a year, the incubator is already filled with tenants in industries ranging from
biotech to advanced materials.
The incubator has resulted in the creation or retention of 60 science and technology jobs and provided more than 20 students with the opportunity to get hands-on experience working for these emerging companies. The Spin In program pairs teams of students with companies at the incubator, enabling the students to get hands-on work experience.
The companies at the STAR Campus incubator have attracted more than $5 million in funding.
This article appeared in the premiere issue of Delaware Innovation Magazine, an overview of the state’s cutting edge industries and the people leading them. See the whole issue here.
The Center for Composite Materials at the University of Delaware is a leader when it comes to basic and applied research in composites. Founded in 1974, the center has an economic impact on Delaware of about $50 million a year.
More than 150 Delaware companies benefit from its work, and it supports 450 jobs around the state. More than 150 professionals, graduate students, fellows and undergraduate students are engaged in research in its more than 58,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art research facility.
Some of the recent projects the center has conducted in Delaware include a design for composite girders used in more than 45 bridges across the United States and the development of a process for designing and manufacturing orthotics made of composite materials for use by wounded soldiers.
Jack Gillespie, the center’s director, tells us more about the center and its role.
When did the Center for Composite Materials start?
CCM was founded in 1974 to conduct basic and applied research, educate students as scientists and engineers and transition our research to industry for commercialization. In 1978, CCM founded our university-industry consortium “Application of Composite Materials to Industrial Products.” More than 400 companies have been members of the consortium, with more than 40 current sponsors. The companies provide funding to educate students as future employees and to fund research that can lead to new products. Since 1985 and through 2022, CCM is designated as a Center of Excellence, receiving awards through national competition from the National Science Foundation, Army Research Office, Office of Naval Research, Federal Aviation Administration and Army Research Laboratory. Today, CCM has more than 2,500 alumni working in industry, government laboratories and academia, teaching the next generation of students. CCM also has an international network of outreach on composites science and engineering with more than 3,500 companies worldwide and more than 100 in the state of Delaware.
What are composites and what are their benefits?
Composites are ultra-lightweight materials consisting of two or more constituents (e.g., carbon fibers and polymer matrix) that yield multifunctional properties providing superior product performance. For example, carbon fiber-reinforced polymers have higher specific stiffness and strength than other material. Composites don’t corrode. Composites can offer improved thermal, electrical and electromagnetic properties. A key aspect of composites is that they are anisotropic (properties are directionally dependent), and the microstructure can be designed/tailored to further improve performance and reduce weight.
What is the center’s role?
CCM’s mission is to do research, education and technology transfer to industry. On the research side, we have capabilities to synthesize new constituent materials, process new composites, characterize multifunctional properties and design composites for new applications. A major uniqueness is CCM’s capability to manufacture and scale up materials into functional prototypes. Proving out the materials, processing, manufacturing scale-up and performance of products is very unique and provides great value to our industrial sponsors interested in commercializing these products.
How does the center work with industry?
CCM seeks long-term partnerships with industry through our industrial consortium. CCM will also team up with industry to compete for federal research funding. CCM is very active working with small businesses, providing access to our experts for consultation and helping them win SBIR/STTR programs to secure funding for their companies. CCM helped incubate and spin off many small companies. CCM also works closely with the Delaware Economic Development Office to attract new companies to Delaware.
Does the center work with other universities?
CCM has a long history of collaboration with academia. Many of our graduates are now faculty at other universities. We routinely team up and partner with universities to strengthen our proposals and increase the probability of winning. Currently we have an ARL-funded program with Johns Hopkins, CalTech and Rutgers on multiscale modeling to create a “Materials by Design” computational framework for new materials. We are also working on a DARPA project with Clemson, Virginia Tech and Drexel universities on creating new materials and processes that can be stamped like metals at very high rates, while retaining the ultra-high properties used in space and aerospace composite applications.
This article appeared in the premiere issue of Delaware Innovation Magazine, an overview of the state’s cutting edge industries and the people leading them. See the whole issue here.
Mark Rieger is the dean of the University of Delaware’s College of Agriculture & Natural Resources and believes it is important that the school has combined the two disciplines, the better to create a strong relationship between them. He answered some questions on the current agricultural climate and its future.
In your “Message from the Dean,” you talk about doubling agricultural yields without using more land and water. How does that happen?
We need to use smart machines, like driverless tractors that are guided by GPS. We need to find chemical inputs that turn nature against the things trying to eat crops and find more genetic engineering. What we can’t do is plow down more land.
Where are the biggest challenges for this?
We’re fine in this country, but the biggest problems are in Africa and Latin America, where the average family size is six. Can we find the technology that is appropriate for that land?
What type of technology is being used now?
It’s about precision agriculture, using smartphone apps to help farmers and their machinery. Those tractors that are hooked up to GPS are also collecting data as they go along to make yield maps. There’s a wealth of big data about what’s happening on a 1,000-acre farm. The machines are not just plowing; they are trying to optimize.
How does the innovation affect consumers?
Take GMOs (genetically optimized organisms). Nobody trusts them, but 90 percent of scientists say they are OK, and the FDA does too. We have to get past some of the issues involving how GMOs are perceived.
This article appeared in the premiere issue of Delaware Innovation Magazine, an overview of the state’s cutting edge industries and the people leading them. See the whole issue here.
NEWARK, Del. (AP) — The University of Delaware is participating in a federal pilot program that will test the effectiveness of extra student loan counseling.
Typically, students receive a counseling session before their freshman year and an exit session when they graduate.
The News Journal in Wilmington reports (http://delonline.us/2tX6JBH ) that starting this fall, half the students will be required to take extra counseling sessions while they’re in school any time they borrow more money. The other half will continue under the old system.
The university is one of about 50 schools nationwide selected to participate in the pilot program.
Since 2007, total student debt in the U.S. has nearly tripled.
The average amount of loans taken out by in-state students at the university exceeds $20,000.
University of Delaware hospitality professor Ali Poorani teamed up with Bill Sullivan, managing director of the Marriott Courtyard Newark, to create a new set of metrics for evaluating “human capital performance” in the hotel industry.
“The current metrics, such as average daily rates, occupancy percentages, revenue per available room, and various labor costs that hotels use to measure performance, though well-established, do not adequately quantify return on human capital investment,” Sullivan said.
Poorani has long wanted to develop metrics that factored in human capital, but he didn’t think the data would be available. That’s when he approached the Marriott, which is located on the college’s campus.
The team then applied the Vienna Human Capital Performance Index to the Marriott over a span of three years.
According to a press release from the University of the Delaware, the index calculates:
• Entire investment in human capital: Employee costs, costs in support of employees and costs in lieu of employees.
• Human capital productivity: The amount of revenue generated for each dollar invested in human capital after adjusting for the costs of material.
• Profit sensitivity: The ratio between profit-driven incentives and profit goals determined by the organization.
Sullivan said the study “provides evidence for the ties between financial returns and human capital performance at strategic levels.”
In the future, the hotel will continue to use this data to explore the role of human capital investment in factors like profit and productivity.
The Pete du Pont Freedom Foundation, a supporter of business-friendly policy ideas, hired Palina Ivanova last month as its first executive director since launching nearly five years ago.
A recent graduate of the University of Delaware, Ivanova, 22, will lead the foundation’s key programs. These include the Pete du Pont Freedom Award and the Reinventing Delaware event series, which highlights new ideas. She will also serve as the public face of the still-somewhat-obscure foundation.
“A lot of people don’t know about us. We’ve been under the radar,” said Scott Malfitano, vice president at CSC and a board member for the foundation. “We intend with the hiring of Palina to actually help expand our reach in the community and break some barriers to creating more jobs.”
Malfitano said Ivanova’s age was part of the appeal. The foundation wants to attract more young Delawareans, he added, and Ivanova will be an ideal ambassador.
“She just stood out among the others, even some of them who had more work experience,” Malfitano said. “Palina is very entrepreneurial, very driven, very focused.”
The current board of directors includes Mike Houghton, Bill Manning, and Ben du Pont and Thère du Pont, both sons of the former governor.
Malfitano and Manning, an attorney for Saul Ewing LLP, started the foundation as a way to honor Pete du Pont’s legacy and connect and inform Delaware leaders. The foundation was the second incarnation of an organization that began as a political action committee.
“We set up a PAC, and found out that was somewhat useless,” Malfitano said. “We were making small strides, and it got to be a little political, which we didn’t want to do.”
The political orientation of the PAC stuck with the foundation for its first years, as it honored the likes of Republicans Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani with the Pete du Pont Freedom Award. More recently, the foundation recognized Dr. Mehmet Oz, the surgeon and popular TV personality (who is also an in-law of Ben du Pont).
The hiring of Ivanova is part of a continued shift towards more a bipartisan identity.
“Bottom line [is] we want to create jobs in Delaware, and that’s not political,” Malfitano said.
Ivanova, for her part, brings to the table her experience as a student entrepreneur. An accounting major, she also took part in the Horn Entrepreneurship program. Her startup, Revive, an app that helps women swap clothing, received $12,000 in funding after winning second place and the audience choice award in the program’s Hen Hatch Pitch Competition.
She said her background will help her reach different types of entrepreneurs across the state.
“In my role, I can go out and talk to entrepreneurs, both nonprofit and for-profit, and talk about what our mission is and see where we align,” Ivanova said.
She said she recognizes that a number of groups in Delaware aim to connect business leaders and facilitate collaboration, but that the Freedom Foundation and its board members offer connections that can help bring ideas to fruition.
One of her first projects is to organize the next Reinventing Delaware idea generation series in November. The event is free, except for one qualification: all attendees must bring an idea to help make Delaware a better state.
One of the main reasons that the University of Delaware continues to grow in national stature is Kelvin Lee, Ph.D., Gore Professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and director of the National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals (NIIMBL).
A decorated scientist who spent several years at the Biotechnology Institute in Zurich, Lee spearheaded NIIMBL’s application and was able to create a consortium of education and business leaders in support of the bid. Here, he talks about the work NIIMBL hopes to accomplish.
What is the mission of NIIMBL?
Each of the institutions addresses a different industry sector. Ours is dedicated to biopharmaceutical manufacturing. What many people aren’t aware of is that there are two categories of medications: those manufactured using chemistry, which include most pills and tablets, and those manufactured using biology, which is used in vaccines and cell therapies. That’s our area.
How does that work help patients?
Biology can be used to help manufacture a product that can create more complicated medications that are more targeted.
How does technology play a role in all of this?
This is about trying to develop innovations needed to manufacture new medications. Advanced technology is needed to do that, and we need a workforce that can do that. It must work in highly controlled environments that are highly regulated by the FDA. We will be providing skills to those workers.
What does this mean for the University of Delaware?
It’s exciting for a lot of different reasons. It does leverage some of the existing strengths of the university, such as chemical engineering and biotechnology. It also creates new opportunities for the region to be seen as a leading biopharmaceutical manufacturer. Companies will want to recruit people from the area and also want to place their manufacturing facilities here.
How will UD students be able to take part?
There are a lot of different opportunities. To the extent that NIIMBL is going to execute technical projects, I can imagine graduate students working on those projects and getting hands-on training. I can imagine community college students getting skills to be plant operators. And non-traditional students can get training to handle a piece of equipment.
This article appeared in the premiere issue of Delaware Innovation Magazine, an overview of the state’s cutting edge industries and the people leading them. See the whole issue here.
GeoSwap, a mobile app developed by University of Delaware students, launches in Wilmington on Thursday with a special event called Wilm Day.
Throughout Trolley Square, North Market Street, and The Riverfront, local businesses will offer discounts and special deals in partnership with the app.
The app provides information about events and destinations happening around the user’s location. It was developed through the University of Delaware’s Horn Entrepreneurship program.
The founders, Jason Bamford and Jordan Gonzalez, have been out of school for just two months, and they’ve set up shop at the 1313 Innovation co-working space in downtown Wilmington.
“Our goal is to show the people of Wilmington that there are always things going on, and that GeoSwap is the best place to go to find them,” said Jordan Gonzalez, CMO of GeoSwap. “We have specials showing great places where people can go to eat, but on top of that we also have events and landmarks so everyone can always find something interesting to do.”
GeoSwap also recently partnered with the Delaware Tourism Board to develop a series of events to attract visitors.
Wilm Day marks the beginning of a month of specials. To access the deals, users must present the in-app deal to the wait staff or cashier. More information is available here: http://geoswap.com/wilm-day/
(AP) — The Delaware Institute for the Arts in Education has a new director.
The News Journal reported on Thursday the Institute recently named one of its teachers as the artistic director.
Ashley SK Davis has been a teaching artist for DIAE since 2008. The choreographer and actor earned a bachelor’s in philosophy at Spelman College in Atlanta. She’s also the executive and artistic director of Delaware-based dance company Pieces of a Dream, Inc.
Most recently she was a director for a University of Delaware production examining the black experience in the U.S. and South Africa.
Davis will oversee all arts programming in her new role. She’ll also manage partnerships with other local organizations and work directly with public, private and charter schools throughout Delaware to give multicultural experiences with the arts.
Sal Klosiewicz (left) tours Greener Solutions’ Millsboro-based operations with his University of Delaware classmates.
As University of Delaware senior Sal Klosiewicz closed in on his final year of classes, his academic advisor recommended a course that promised hands-on experience and the opportunity to work with a small business.
That’s how the marketing major found himself doing a quick dive of poultry mortality and analyzing the scalability of a company that sells collection units to chicken farmers as a green alternative.
“It was fun because we had a really good team,” said Klosiewicz, who took an Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management class taught by adjunct faculty member Margo Reign last fall. “You don’t realize how much you know until you apply it.”
Application of skills and the transition from student to working graduate is why Reign, also a business analyst at the Small Business Development Center, and other UD professionals tout experiential learning projects as a critical gateway to life after graduation.
The University of Delaware has required all undergraduate students to take at least three credits of discovery-based or experiential learning in fulfillment of their degrees since 2005.
Reign’s small business management class already offered a nuts-and-bolts look at the inner workings of small business — from identifying target markets to building an operations and marketing plan, and hiring and managing employees. But classroom knowledge needs to be tested, said Reign.
“I think for the students it’s valuable because it’s one of the classes you can’t go to library and look up the answer,” explained Reign, who has paired students with area small businesses for 20 years. “It requires rolling up your shirt sleeves and figuring it out. There’s no simple answer to anything once you’re in
the real world.”
For their part, businesses that participate in the projects must have a specific and definable request. Some companies pay a nominal fee, depending on the project.
Klosiewicz and his four-member team worked with Victor Clark, co-owner and vice president for legal and government affairs at Greener Solutions, a Millsboro-based company that markets collection units for routine poultry mortality.
The collection units, or freezers, are a foil to composting and bit burials, marketed as an environmentally friendly alternative.
Clark and co-founder Terry Baker launched Greener Solutions in 2012, and market to growers, breeders and laying operations throughout the Delmarva peninsula, according to the company’s website.
But in-depth market research to scale a company takes time, so Clark contacted Reign about marketing and research project led by her students.
“Our bandwidth is limited,” said Clark. “So to have someone to provide some resources in exchange for getting hands-on experience, that seemed good for us.”
Klosiewicz said he and his teammates conducted extensive research on the industry and its history, met regularly with Clark and leaned on Reign’s guidance. “We looked where we think it’s changing and where challenges might be,” he said.
Eventually, the group recommended a leasing option for farmers to try the collection units before buying.
“It was a fresh set of eyes and hands,” said Clark, who added that he and his partner are considering implementing the students’ suggestions. “And they did a lot of research on the industry on how we could expand the scope.”
Erwin Saniga, Dana J. Johnson professor of information technology at Lerner, teaches operations management students. He developed an experiential learning program in 1984 after talking with industry professionals about the skills deficits of graduates.
The takeaway?
“They said don’t know how to take charge, do something, and communicate the results,” said Saniga, of his findings. “They want people that have the ability to decide what’s important and do it to make the organization better off.”
Saniga said he took a page from tried-and-true consulting programs, and paired students with nonprofits, Fortune 500 companies and organizations to solve problems and improve business systems.
Over the years, Saniga said, his students have talked worked on myriad operations problems, and have been able to pinpoint and refine variables that impact the quality of the product and optimization of the operations.
Recently, one project group worked with a local hospital to address scheduling issues in its emergency room.
While the physician in charge of scheduling thought he had pinpointed the ER’s busiest times, Saniga’s students analyzed three years of data that suggested the physician’s findings were off base.
“So we built a big forecasting model to schedule doctors and nurses,” said Saniga, who added that the experiential learning projects are not “make work” projects for his students. “The students get this great learning experience so they’re ready to go into the job and make a difference immediately. They are making the organization better.”
Kris and Melinda Nonnenmacher, owners of Delaware-based Galleyware Company, paired with a group of five UD business students last year to update their website. The company is an online retailer that sells everything from items for galleys in yachts to gift items.
The Nonnenmachers met weekly with their team, who analyzed their existing website then researched the marketplace for a better platform to feature the company’s more than 2,500 products. Then they built the framework.
“At the end of the project we took them out to a dinner and asked if we could keep in contact with them to plot their careers,” said Kris. “We got the best team by far. On a weekly basis, it was a joy to be with them.”
As for Klosiewicz, he said he hopes to pursue a job in the pharmaceutical industry after graduation in December, and he thinks he’ll be ready.
“The business acumen that you develop over the years is really transferable, because I never in a million years thought I would be touring a chicken farm and doing that research,” said Klosiewicz. “You realize that your education has prepared you for a wide range of things, and this project brought that to the forefront.”
In the summer of 2016, the University of Delaware launched a 12-week workshop for engineering students interested in starting a business. The program prepares undergraduates steeped in complicated math and lab work to bring their ideas to market.
“Just because you have a good product doesn’t mean you have a good company,” said Dustyn Roberts, director of the College of Engineering (CoE) Summer Founders program and assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering.
Roberts said the program teaches what she calls the “entrepreneurial mindset,” a mix of traits such as resilience, risk-taking and adaptiveness. Participants also learn the practical side of business, such as customer and competitor research.
The summer workshop is part of an ongoing effort at Delaware’s largest university to encourage entrepreneurship across campus, according to school officials. Even in more technical and research-intensive fields, such as engineering, the college is positioning itself as a welcoming place for students interested in starting a business.
“The ties between the University of Delaware entrepreneurship program and the engineering department are growing stronger,” said Erica Comber, who graduated in 2017 with a degree in biomedical engineering. “I have been seeing more and more engineers hanging out in the entrepreneurship spaces.”
In addition, the Horn Program in Entrepreneurship — the school’s celebrated hub for entrepreneurial workshops, classes and support services — has officially moved out of the Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics.
“They’ve always been an umbrella organization that deals with all of the colleges, but now it will be explicit in the way that it’s structured,” Roberts said.
The growth of entrepreneurship on campus has pushed the university to refine what kind of financial relationship it has with students — specifically when it comes to intellectual
“The approach to intellectual property has shifted quite a bit in the last few years,” said David S. Weir, director of the Office of Economic Innovation and Partnerships, which facilitates third-party partnerships and commercialization at the school.
The Horn Program has set the model, taking a hands-off approach to student intellectual property.
“It’s really built in favor of the students,” said Jason Bamford, co-founder of GeoSwap, a recent winner of the Hen Hatch startup funding competition. “They are just there to help.”
But students in more research-intensive fields face different questions as they consider whether or not to start a business while in school.
“It’s different in the lab because you’re working on a project that’s already being developed and you’re getting support from the school,” said Bamford, a graduate of the engineering program.
Mainly this applies to graduate students, who are treated like faculty. But there are conditions for undergraduates as well.
The current policy states that the university owns all inventions and discoveries developed by faculty, staff or students that “result from work directly related to professional or employment responsibilities at the University, or from work carried out on University time, or at University expense, or with the substantial use
of University resources.”
That last part, “substantial use,” is where mobile apps developed in dorm rooms can sometimes differ from complicated, research-intensive inventions.
“By default undergraduates own their own IP, unless they’re using significant university resources,” Roberts said. “Typically the way anyone would define significant recourses is not just using the wood shop, which is open to every student.”
She added that working with a faculty member who is doing federally funded research, for example, would potentially qualify as significant use. That’s due to the federal Bayh Dole Act, which permits small businesses, universities and nonprofits to claim intellectual property rights on inventions made with federal funding.
For comparison, Delaware State University has a similar policy.
“If the IP is from research done in collaboration with or employment by a faculty member, say in a faculty member’s research lab or for research for a graduate degree with a faculty advisor, the IP policy applies to students,” wrote Melissa A. Harrington, interim associate vice president of research at DSU, in an email.
“It would be trickier for IP that a student generates independently — not part of a class or participation in a faculty-led research project, and not part of research for a graduate degree,” she added.
Making these distinctions can be difficult, Weir admitted, for students just getting their feet wet in both entrepreneurship and the intricacies of school policy.
“Everybody has to very aware of the policy, and in a university that’s not always the case. Sometimes we have to come behind and clean it up,” Weir said.
NEWARK — Delmarva Power today hosted more than 85 Delaware regulators, officials, and energy advocates at the company’s New Technology Symposium, “Energizing Our Future.”
The event showcased some of the company’s innovations – from a mobile app that streamlines substation general inspections to the use of drones for reviewing power lines.
“Our industry is becoming flooded with new technology and ways to serve our customers differently,” said Gary Stockbridge, Delmarva Power region president. “At the same time, a lot of the policy makers in our state are new and don’t know our business all that well.”
Stockbridge said helping them understand key advancements will be lay the groundwork for future industry discussions.
The event is a first for Delmarva Power. Employees displayed the latest in the company’s efforts to advance solar energy for customers, develop new technologies for future smart cities, and implement new technologies to enhance safety and support the digital worker.
Delmarva Power engineers Joseph Mauriello and Brett Collacchi developed and launched a mobile app in 2015 that automates substation inspections and streamlines the process for regulatory compliance.
John Beachell shared how use of unmanned aircraft systems for infrastructure inspections can provide insight into outages not apparent from ground inspections. Five demonstration missions have been flown by a drone, and Beachell said its use could reduce employee safety risks and increase efficiency.
Industry and university partners also displayed new technologies at the event, including the University of Delaware and Delaware Department of Natural Resources.
The use of solar technology was also big draw at the symposium. According to Senior Communications Specialist Nick Morici, Delmarva has more than 7,000 solar customers. New applicants for solar power can now track the process from application to construction and delivery.
The New Technology Symposium is part of Delmarva Power’s ongoing efforts to provide safe, reliable and affordable energy service to customers and communities across Delaware, according to Delmarva officials.
Stockbridge said that future symposiums could include targeted invitations to those who benefit from new technologies, including commercial, industrial, and low-income customers.
Daniel J. Freeman University of Delaware Horn Program in Entrepreneurship
When big business dominated the nation’s commerce, college business students typically had three choices of majors: administration, finance and accounting. The contemporary search for “the next big thing” has moved entrepreneurship into the spotlight. Daniel J. Freeman is associate professor of business administration at the University of Delaware and director of its Horn Program in Entrepreneurship.
What is the Horn Program and how did it get started?
The program started in October 2012 as an outgrowth of our entrepreneurial studies program. It was truly an inflection point in our effort to build a robust entrepreneurial education program at the university. It’s named after donors Charlie and Patricia Horn. He’s a 1975 UD grad — a sociology major — who became a serial entrepreneur in insurance-related businesses.
Is it for undergraduate students, graduate students or both?
It’s for both. Undergrads can major in entrepreneurship and technology innovation or minor in either entrepreneurial studies or social entrepreneurship. Graduate students can earn an M.B.A. with a major in entrepreneurial studies or an M.S. in entrepreneurship and design. About 175 students are enrolled in degree programs. Nearly 1,000 students are taking classes or participating in program activities.
What is the program’s goal for its students?
We aim to create, capture and deliver value from new ideas. We want our students to learn how to recognize opportunity, generate ideas, validate innovative business models, bring new technologies to market and launch new ventures.
How do you help your students connect with other entrepreneurs?
We bring them together through a lot of special events. On our Free Lunch Fridays, entrepreneurs come in and share the secrets of their success. We usually get 50 or 60 students out to listen to them. Our Venture Development Center provides resources and support to help students hatch and grow their own businesses. Alumni and local entrepreneurs come in to judge pitch competitions as students seek funding for their projects. We look at startups as an educational process, an opportunity for advanced learning.
This article appeared in the premiere issue of Delaware Innovation Magazine, an overview of the state’s cutting edge industries and the people leading them. See the whole issue here.
(AP) — The University of Delaware is scheduled to break ground on the $156 million Biopharmaceutical Innovation Building at its STAR Campus.
The News Journal of Wilmington reports that the six-story, 200,000-square-foot (18580.45-sq. meter) building on which construction will begin Monday is unique in that the university will finance it without state or government grants and will be the owner. With previous developments, the university leased the space and a private company constructed the building.
University President Dennis Assanis said the money will come both from bonds and private philanthropy.
The building will house the Newark-based National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals, a project that unites more than 150 universities, private companies and nonprofits.
The building will also be home to complementary life science research and technology programs.
It’s scheduled to open in January 2020.
Buck Simpers was always drawn to the education arena. But it took a dry teaching market and a pivot to architecture to get him there.
Today, natural light, soaring two-story spaces and the absence of dark corridors are some of the hallmarks of Buck Simpers Architect + Associates, Inc. (BSA+A) designs, which include a growing portfolio
of the region’s K-12 spaces.
For a man who graduated from the University of Delaware with a teaching degree and an eye toward coaching, the alternative plan turned out to be better anyway.
“What’s beautiful is that the outside world is our lab,” said Simpers, who said he never stops designing; his son even refused to ride in the car with him long ago. “I would drive through red lights and stop at green lights, just looking at how buildings are put together.”
Now he can study his own buildings as BSA+A design projects dot the area’s landscape: New Castle Public Library, Artisans’ Bank headquarters in Wilmington, New Castle County Courthouse, YMCA Central Branch, just to name a few, and of course, schools like Middletown, Appoquinimink and Cape Henlopen high schools.
The latter was named to Architectural Digest’s list of The Most Beautiful Public High Schools in Every State in America in September.
“As a designer, are you out there trying to win awards?” said Simpers. “No, you’re trying to give the best product to the client.”
Eighty percent of those clients are school districts, from New York City to Baltimore. BSA+A also specializes in corporate office space, health care, institutional, mixed-use facilities and private residences.
But it was a strategic move by Simpers to focus on education spaces — specifically K-12 — an outgrowth of who he is is, he said.
“I had and still have a passion for schools and what a school is. We took our passion and design energy and focused it into education,” explained Simpers.
His great-uncle studied architecture under famed Philadelphia architect Louis Kahn. His father was a woodworker and his mother a “frustrated interiors person,” according to Simpers. “I grew up knowing a wall was not very sacred. Your living environment could and did change.”
When Simpers didn’t land a teaching job after graduation, he circled back to his uncle and apprenticed with a circle of architects and mentors who helped him gather experience and gave him responsibility early on.
He got his feet wet on projects like Kirkbride Lecture Hall and residential building and design projects like Barley Mill Courts, Limerick, Limestone Hills and the subdivision of Fairthorne, the first design award Simpers earned for subdivision layout and land planning.
Eventually, he earned a certificate in architecture and founded his own firm in 1979.
But it was his work on a little hotel downtown, now campus housing for the Delaware College of Art & Design, that caught the attention of Christina School District officials, who used the space for office retreats.
“They needed an eight-classroom addition on the East Side and we did that, and bam, we were doing more school work,” Simpers said.
Ironically, Delaware had seen no new high school construction for close to 30 years when BSA+A was contracted to build Middletown Senior High School on Del. 299.
The last full build? Cape Henlopen High School in 1969. Since then, an influx of students and aging infrastructure has kept BSA+A busy.
In 2004, the firm was contracted to design Cape Henlopen’s new high school, a $76 million Georgian complex linked by a central rotunda, the main entry to academic, administrative and community meeting space.
“Our vision for that high school, since it’s on Kings Highway, was that it would be the gateway into the town of Lewes,” explained Janis Hanwell, former Cape Henlopen assistant superintendent and project director during the build. “We wanted it to reflect the historical civic nature of the town of Lewes,” she said.
The high school opened in 2009.
“AIA Delaware is very proud that a longstanding member was able to have one of their buildings showcased in a very large publication,” said Philip Conte, president of AIA Delaware and a principal with Studio JAED.
“Buck is one of the best business-development-focused architects, and that’s often a challenge. We’re very creative but we don’t know how to sell our selves and he’s very good at that.”
BSA+A is working on their next school projects, like the new Fairview Campus for Appoquinimink School Disctrict. And commercial work includes the 40,000-square-foot Bank of America building at Little Falls and a 40,000-square-foot medical office building on Churchmans Road.
“I still like doing what I’m doing,” said Simpers. “And there’s an old adage that architects don’t really know what they’re doing until they reach the age of 50.”
The University of Delaware’s STAR Campus on Monday broke ground on the new Biopharmaceutical Innovation Building. The building is slated to open in early 2020.
The 200,000-square-foot research facility will feature state-of-the-art laboratories and serve as the headquarters for the National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals (NIIMBL), which works to advance the industry and develop the next generation of workers.
The university has promoted the building as a way of helping Delaware stay at the forefront of the emerging biopharmaceutical industry.
Kelvin Lee, Gore Professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, first came up with the idea, but imagined it as a much smaller 60,000-square foot space.
“The STAR Campus was truly a field of dreams,” UD President Dennis Assanis said, “a blank canvas on which we started painting the future of our University and our state. We wanted this to be a place where our strengths in teaching and research would intersect with the needs of our community and the world, where faculty and students and staff would work with innovators and entrepreneurs from throughout the region.”
Lee will lead the NIIMBL initiative, which has $70 million in federal funding and additional support from UD and other partners.
(AP) — The Chemours Co., a specialty chemical company spunoff from the DuPont Co., says it plans to build a research and innovation facility on the University of Delaware campus.
Officials said Monday that the project will establish an innovation partnership and talent development pipeline between Chemours and the university, while keeping 330 researcher and technician jobs in the Wilmington area.
Construction on the new 312,000-square-foot facility at UD’s Science, Technology and Advanced Research, or STAR, campus is expected to begin this year and be completed by early 2020.
A groundbreaking ceremony will be held December 18.
An analysis by Schools.com, a college planning website, ranked the University of Delaware number one among four-year colleges in the state.
Schools.com used data from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics to determine the rankings. It measured factors such as costs, degree availability, and flexible learning options.
Here the top five colleges and universities in the study:
(AP) — Former Vice President Joe Biden said he is uncertain about a run for president in 2020, but indicated he’s looking for fresh blood to lead the Democratic Party back to the White House.
“I’ve done it a long time,” said Biden, who previously ran for president in 1988 and 2008, “and I’m just not sure it’s the appropriate thing for me to do.”
His comments came in an interview with Snapchat’s ‘Good Luck America’ set to be released Tuesday morning, in one of Biden’s first on-camera interviews since leaving office in January. The Associated Press was provided with an exclusive preview of the interview.
Biden suggested that if “no one steps up,” he’d be open to giving it another try. “I’m not doing anything to run,” he said. “I’m not taking names, I’m not raising money, I’m not talking to anybody, but something’s got to happen.”
Biden has launched a handful of outside political and policy organizations since leaving the Obama administration, including the Biden Foundation, formed to advocate for his domestic priorities.
The roster of Democrats considering a White House run has swelled well into the double-digits, with potential candidates emboldened by President Donald Trump’s historically low poll numbers.
Biden was interviewed alongside Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a Republican, at the University of Delaware last month.
“We’re both hoping that both our parties generate some real energetic people who have the depth and the capacity to do it,” Biden said of the pair.
Biden, 74, considered a run for the Oval Office in 2016, but decided against it, later citing the trauma of his son Beau’s death to cancer in May 2015 for keeping him from the race. The painful subject forms the story of his new memoir, ‘Promise Me, Dad,’ set for release this week. Biden is launching a month-long tour to promote the book’s publication. He’s become a vocal critic of Trump’s administration in public appearances in recent months.
“We gotta turn this ship around,” Biden said of the country. “And I’d much prefer to be helping someone turn it around than being the guy trying to turn it around.”
In an interview with Oprah Winfrey released Sunday, Biden said he regrets not being in the White House, but not his decision to stay on the sidelines last year. “I don’t regret the decision I made because it’s the right decision for my family,” he said.
Kasich, who has been an outspoken opponent of Trump’s since he challenged him for the Republican nomination in 2016, declined to address his own 2020 plans. “You hold the pen and the Lord will write the sentence,” he said.
