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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2010 > April > 19 > Entry
Guest column: Fund nurtures ideas that can be potent job engines
This column was written by David R. Hopkins, president of Wright State University.
When I think about the Ohio’s Third Frontier program, I think about Nick Schroeder.
A few short years ago, Nick was working in a fast-food restaurant. Today, the Wright State University graduate is using lasers to make precision cuts needed to manufacture medical instruments.
Schroeder landed the job with the Mound Laser & Photonics Center, thanks to funding from the Ohio Third Frontier — an ambitious effort to grow new companies and new technologies in the state.
Voters will be asked May 4 to approve selling $700 million in bonds that would continue to fund the Third Frontier. That investment has helped create an infrastructure of buildings, equipment and people that is becoming the backbone of the new knowledge-based economy.
In a few short years, Wright State University alone has turned $24 million in Third Frontier funding into hundreds of new jobs. In addition, Third Frontier funding has provided a platform for schools like Wright State and the University of Dayton to work together.
A Third Frontier grant of $28 million helped establish the Institute for the Development and Commercialization of Advanced Sensor Technology, or IDCAST. Led by the University of Dayton Research Institute, this world-class center also includes Wright State, the Air Force and dozens of private companies.
We’re all working together to commercialize sensors, devices that receive and convert signals for such things as detecting chemical or biological agents.
In three years, more than 250 jobs related to the work at IDCAST have been created. And Photon-X, a company that is developing a lightweight, affordable 3-D camera, expects its new product to create thousands of jobs in coming years.
Third Frontier activities have created a powerful union of talent, pooling the strengths of the Wright State Research Institute, the Wright Brothers Institute, the Dayton Development Coalition and the 711th Human Performance Wing at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
One of the most visible creations of Third Frontier funding is daytaOhio. That center features the dazzling, virtual-reality Appenzeller lab that takes visitors on journeys underneath the Earth’s surface, past factory assembly lines and retail stores, and even through the human bloodstream.
About $12.6 million in Third Frontier funding received by Wright State was used to start daytaOhio. The money helped create visualization and other facilities at four other universities that are networked together and to launch programs with the Air Force Research Lab at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base that use virtual reality to improve human performance.
To date, the Third Frontier funding managed by daytaOhio has also generated more than 230 new jobs, was matched by more than $40 million in research dollars from state universities and private companies, and has generated more than $16 million in new investments in Ohio.
It has also enabled daytaOhio to work with nine start-up businesses, the beginning of a “farm-system” that can take new technologies and turn them into commercial products.
Third Frontier money also helped create the LexisNexis Ohio Eminent Scholar position, which helped bring Amit Sheth, Ph.D., to Wright State. Sheth has founded two companies since his arrival, and his research has led to several commercial products.
Third Frontier funding has attracted Elliott Brown, Ph.D., a pioneering physicist and engineer from the University of California who is Wright State’s new endowed chair in experimental sensor physics.
Brown plans to build a center of excellence in sensors that will have applications in national security and counterterrorism as well as law enforcement and medicine. In still another area, about $1.5 million in Third Frontier money helped build and equip the Center for Genomics Research.
With the goal of better diagnosing and treating cancer, the center uses technologies that enable researchers to more clearly understand differences between human cancers or assess responses to various toxic compounds.
These powerful cross-disciplinary alliances of researchers, scientists and engineers are into everything from neuroscience to micro air vehicles.
The Third Frontier has given birth to a wonderful set of assets. If nourished, these assets promise to become powerful job-producing engines.
If we have the courage to continue the Third Frontier, the Nick Schroeders of the world and all Ohioans will have a brighter future.
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By Dalcapone Alpaccino Morris
April 20, 2010 8:16 AM | Link to this
Third Frontier is wonderful. Just keep the $$ away from City of Dayton, AKA the “T@RD FRONTIER”!!
By J
April 20, 2010 8:28 AM | Link to this
Seems some people can’t read. Selling bonds… It’s just like selling stock shares to make money. They’re traded on the open market, just like stocks. Third Frontier doesn’t incur debt. Keep the money from Dayton is a great idea. Everyone else is. Tax cuts may help, if that’s the reason jobs left, but it isn’t. Jobs left because it’s just a lot simpler to build in Asia. Kids work cheap, they don’t care about pollution or safety, and if they do, they can use their own muscle to shut them up. We never stopped committing our worst business practices, we just exported them. At least we export something.
By FAM
April 20, 2010 11:55 AM | Link to this
The simplistic, reflexive responses by those that oppose any government related program (i.e., Third Frontier Program) is like an anchor that is constantly slowing any possible progress, and instead is dragging everyone down. As pointed out, the Third Frontier Program relies on Bond funding, not tax funding, but that doesn’t inhibit those that don’t waste time researching a topic before sharing their lack of knowledge along with their dissent.
By Rick
April 20, 2010 5:10 PM | Link to this
Anyone who asserts that relying on bond funding is not the same as tax funding is either disingenous or ignorant. When the bonds become due they have to be payed back. With what? Tax money!
By BAM-davidss2
April 21, 2010 8:53 AM | Link to this
FAM forgot that bonds are backed by the tax base of the State of Ohio. The universities get a lot of money from the state alread, along with the tuition from students. Some of that money can be directed to whatever the universities wish to spend it on for research. They don’t need to use OPM (other people’s money)taken from them through taxation. We already saw where that went with Trammel and the Human Services Levy and lax county oversight—remember the terrible need for a 50% rise in the Human Services levy, or was it doubled, that voters passed in 2007? All that money was NOT well spend and they are back for another levy as well. If businesses see a future to spending for research in the Fifth Frontier (that will be in your future) they should spend their own funding money. FAM notice I don’t ridicule you for wanting to gleefully spend OPM the way you criticized those who dissent from overspending.
By FAM
April 21, 2010 4:12 PM | Link to this
In business there is a well known and accepted premise, that “to make money you must spend money”. The Third Frontier Program is consistent with that premise. Due to the current national/State economy, the Bond issue is the logical approach to promoting and supporting new technologies and new, small businesses. The Third Frontier Program, over the past four years, has demonstrated that the approach is effective, and therefore continuing funding is also logical. When the State collects taxes from visitors (i.e., Motel tax, etc.), you can reasonably refer to that as using other people’s money (OPM), but when the State uses Tax or Bond revenues, to support or advance the people and businesses of Ohio, then it is utilizing money you and I and every other Ohio resident have provided through taxes, and Bond investments. We are not using OPM we are using our funds, because we are Ohio. By the way, BAM dss2, I did not ridicule you or anyone else. I made reasonable observations (i.e., “those that don’t waste time researching a topic before sharing their lack of knowledge along with their dissent”). Two of the comments that prompted my comment fit that observation, and you had not entered any comment.
By BAM-davidss2
April 21, 2010 4:22 PM | Link to this
News flash: it’s other people’s money you’re wanting to spend. If it takes money to make money, then those businesses should be subsidized by other businesses, banks, and those that love them enough to loan them money.
By EnviniloG
March 27, 2011 9:24 AM | Link to this
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