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$250,000 National Grid grant will boost biomedics at UB

By George Pyle
NEWS BUSINESS REPORTER
May 01, 2010

National Grid and the University at Buffalo announced Friday that the utility company is giving $250,000 to enhance a computerized communications network that will link the school’s multiple campuses with each other and with biomedical companies around Western New York.

A portion of the grant, announced at UB’s downtown Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences, will also be used as seed money for companies or spinoffs from local biomedical research to bring products to market.

Tom King, president of National Grid’s United States operations, said the money is an investment of shareholder funds, supplemented with state economic development money that funnels through the utility.

“What you have done here creates a hub for development,” King said. “We’re thrilled to be a part of that future, of that knowledge-based work force that is going to go out and create tomorrow.”

Harvey G. Stenger, dean of the UB School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, explained that the new network, dubbed Access Grid, will allow instructors, students, researchers and partners in private industry to have real-time video conferences and share complicated information, designs and problems. It will mean upgrading video conferencing centers at UB’s North and downtown campuses, and installing one at the South Campus.

The system is based on technology developed at the Argonne National Laboratory outside Chicago.

UB President John B. Simpson said the grant and the resulting network and seed money will boost the university’s medical school, engineering school and their joint program teaching biomedical engineering. In addition to its support of economic growth, Simpson said, the work will go toward innovations that will improve the health and well-being of Western New Yorkers.

“Our goal is independence and wellness maintained into the ninth decade of life,” Simpson said.