Even to a casual observer, it's clear that Minnesota’s bioscience industries have traveled a very long way in the past few years.
In 2003, when I convened our state’s first bioscience summit, some experts thought that Minnesota would never be able to catch the bioscience express.
The train had left the station, they instructed us, and we weren’t on it. But Minnesotans refused to accept that.
Today there’s no question that we’re not just on track; we’re on board the train and helping to drive it. How? By making a sound assessment of our public, private, and academic assets and by making prudent and strategic investments in those assets. We have begun to realize the full potential of our biosciences industries that today employ nearly 42,000 Minnesotans and thousands more in firms that are in some way connected to the bioscience industry.
Minnesota’s bioscience success is the result of partnerships, collaboration and the dedicated hard work of such key players as LifeScience Alley, the BioBusiness Alliance of Minnesota, the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED), the University of Minnesota, the Mayo Clinic, and others. Together with countless individual business and community leaders, academic and professional organizations, and state and local government officials, we’ve created a formidable and effective means to foster the continued growth of an industry that is changing lives.
The 2007 legislative session yielded more than $8 million in appropriations for bioscience development, support, research, and promotion. The investment marks a continuation of last year’s $170 million commitment to public investment in the biosciences, which included significant funding for new science and research facilities at the University of Minnesota and several campuses of the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system.
This year’s spending bills include $1.75 million to help the BioBusiness Alliance of Minnesota develop and promote Minnesota as a global leader in bioscience business. The total also includes funding for University Enterprise Laboratories to support early stage and emerging bioscience companies, as well as grants to the cities of Worthington and Pine Island to develop bioscience training facilities and research parks. The package includes $3 million for research activities in bioenergy and biofuels.
We also continued to encourage and invest in the very successful partnership between the University of Minnesota and the Mayo Clinic that is facilitating the commercialization of new technologies. This year, the state committed $41 million to this venture over the next four years. Funding was also provided to expand and enhance training for Minnesota teachers in science, technology, engineering, and math instruction. Mastery of these so-called “STEM” disciplines is critical for today’s students to compete in tomorrow’s global arena.
We’ve made a series of smart, targeted public investments to support and augment private investment in Minnesota’s bioscience companies, and I believe these are accomplishments we can and should celebrate. I’m proud we ignored the experts who asserted that the bioscience express was disappearing over the horizon and that Minnesota could never hope to catch up. That wasn’t true four years ago, and it’s certainly not true today.
We’ve made a strong commitment to a future that holds great promise and Minnesota’s strong tradition of innovation and hard work will bring us success in this area as well.
