`Greenhouse' effect will be a boon to Penn

Philadelphia is looking across the state for inspiration on cultivating biotechnology in the region. The city's planned biotech "greenhouses" are modeled after Pittsburgh's state-funded program to enlarge its microchip design industry, which is heavily dependent on the cooperation of academia. "Without the universities, the greenhouse ideas won't work," said Dennis Yablonsky, president and CEO of the Pittsburgh Digital Greenhouse. The "greenhouse" is an economic development program designed to make a given location attractive to highly-specialized businesses by providing access to research and a trained work force. In Pittsburgh, this has meant involving the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie-Mellon and Penn State universities as partners. They receive "reciprocal benefits" from their involvement, according to Yablonsky. "They're getting research money to improve curriculum and the opportunity to work with these companies more intimately because they'll be housed here locally," Yablonsky said. "It's probably making it easier to attract more faculty and students as well." Although officials hope the Digital Greenhouse will create 1,500 jobs, students at the three partner universities will not have to wait until graduation to benefit. Timothy McNulty, of the state Department of Community and Economic Development, said that the greenhouses provide increased access to top-level companies through the students' educational career, and that coursework will likely be revised to "integrate" industry perspectives. "As science changes, scientists will change... and one hopes that they will be able to convey the impact of those changes to their students," David Roos, the director of Penn's newly-created Genomics Institute, said in an e-mail statement. In Philadelphia, universities such as Penn, Thomas Jefferson and Temple are eager to become involved with the biotech greenhouse, assuming it is approved by the state legislature. "There is an old saying in economic development that the ingredients for growing a technology economy are easy to identify, but the recipe for combining these ingredients is very elusive," McNulty said. "We think that the greenhouse model gets the recipe right."