Volunteer tech group may end in June

The Southern Arizona Tech Council wants to meld programs with Tucson Regional Economic Opportunities.

TEYA VITU

tvitu@tucsoncitizen.com

Volunteers want to give way to professionals in improving the high-tech picture in Tucson.

The five-year-old Southern Arizona Tech Council, an umbrella volunteer group for the six industry cluster groups, plans to integrate its business development programs into Tucson Regional Economic Opportunities Inc.

This includes a Biotech Slam, a supplier and trade event set for spring, and a March 23 conference to help high-tech businesses develop Web sites.

The council also coordinates a half-million dollars in state and federal grants that are distributed to the aerospace, manufacturing, information technology, environmental technology, bioindustry, plastics and optics industry cluster organizations for use by individual businesses.

Business news and notes

Arizona Daily Star

TUCSON

Tucson-based tech companies and people scooped up numerous prizes at the Governor’s Celebration of Innovation Awards, handed out Tuesday in Phoenix. AGM Container Controls Inc., a maker of control devices for shipping containers, won the Pioneering Innovation Award; DMetrix Inc., which has developed an ultra-high-resolution microscope system for medical imaging, won Innovator of the Year: Start-up . Three of four Future Innovators of the Year award winners are from Tucson: Elizabeth Baker, University High School; Lesley Ash, Tucson High Magnet School; and Melissa Lamberton, Pueblo High School.

TREO to focus on local business

By Thomas Stauffer

ARIZONA DAILY STAR

The most valuable players in Tucson’s economic expansion will not be the world’s heavy hitters but rather homegrown talent.

That’s the assessment of Joe Snell, CEO of Tucson Regional Opportunities Inc., or TREO, which hosted an open house Thursday to unveil its first strategic one-year plan.

Though TREO made a substantial score last month with the announcement that Iowa-based Pella Corp. will open a manufacturing plant here, the retention and expansion of local companies will be TREO’s primary thrust, Snell said.

“My analogy is the home runs get the cheers but the game is won on base hits,” he said. “We’re going to still be in the business of marketing Tucson to outside companies, but we’re going to spend most of our time on expansion and retention of local companies and the creation of new ones.”

4 schools study corn’s gene code

Max Jarman

The Arizona Republic

Nov. 17, 2005 12:00 AM

Researchers at the University of Arizona and three other universities will share a $29 million federal grant to unlock the genetic code of the corn plant.

Knowledge gained from the Maize Genome Sequencing Project could result in crops that are more bountiful and more resistant to disease.

Corn is one of the most important economic crops in the United States and, along with rice, accounts for 70 percent of the world’s food production.

The grant strengthens Arizona’s position in genomics research, which is considered a key ingredient in building a viable biomedical industry. Genomics is the analysis of an organism’s genes.

TREO: Let’s help firms grow before recruiting

Tucson Citizen

– Joe Snell

Joe Snell, 42, came from Denver in August to become chief executive of the newly created Tucson Regional Economic Opportunities Inc. This new entity brings together the city and county economic development entities as well as the functions of the former Greater Tucson Economic Council. TREO will have an open house to unveil its first-year action plan from 5 to 7 p.m. Thursday at its office on the second floor of the downtown Compass Bank building, 120 N. Stone Ave. Citizen Business Writer Teya Vitu interviewed Snell.

Q: What is your basic impression of how Tucson was going about trying to build a high-tech economy with high-paying jobs before you got here?