Business incubators statewide, including many among our association's membership, repeated their strong performance in the second round of economic-development awards made by New York State through Governor Cuomo's Regional Economic Development Council initiative. Awards to our members or their affiliates include:

• $2.5 million to a regional business-acceleration cooperative led by our supporting member High Tech Rochester.
• $500,000 to our member the Central New York Biotech Accelerator in Syracuse, for fit-out with laboratory equipment.
• $7 million for a new Southern Tier High Technology Incubator in downtown Binghamton, a collaboration between our member SUNY Binghamton University and the regional economic-development community.
• $500,000 for a 30,000 square-foot expansion of biotechnology incubation facilities at our member Broad Hollow Bioscience Park at SUNY Farmingdale on Long Island.
• $500,000 for shared-use laboratory equipment at Rensselaer Tech Park, which manages our member the RPI Emerging Ventures Ecosystem.
• $500,000 for expansion of our member the Pratt Design Incubator at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and addition of a low-run garment-fabrication pilot line.

In addition, awards were made to several incubator and accelerators that are not yet members of our association (and we warmly invite them to join us!).

Finally, a $350,000 economic-development incentive award from Empire State Development was made to Dunkirk Bioenergy, a tenant-client of our supporting member the SUNY Fredonia Technology Incubator. For complete details, read Gov. Cuomo's news release or the full report on all 2012 awards.

Our member the Pratt Design Incubator is helping a Brooklyn group incorporate community designs into a modular system for protective steel guards around street-trees. The guards in turn support wooden benches, so the effect is to create micro-parks around 50 tree pits along a commercial stretch of Brooklyn's Myrtle Avenue. For coverage including a photo, see the Fort Greene Local blog of The New York Times. UPDATE: Wall Street Journal coverage, too!

Stash Sporting Goods, a designer of innovative sports products created by a Class of 1971 alumna of SUNY Fredonia, will move certain operations to the SUNY Fredonia Technology Incubator, one of our supporting members. For more information see the university's news release.

Our supporting member High Tech Rochester has added to its suite of programs a foundation-supported 12-week software/media accelerator program called HTR LaunchPad. Enterpreneurial teams selected for participation by LaunchPad will automatically become affiliates of HTR's incubator programs, with access to mentors, business advisors and other support services at the Lennox Tech Enterprise Center incubator.

The teams will work intensively to develop prototypes that can be presented at investor-oriented "demo days" scheduled for Rochester and New York City in June. Like similar news from our other members, this development stresses how many business incubators provide services for their community that go way beyond provision of office or laboratory space. For more information see HTR's release.

HTR has also announced that its path-breaking Entrepreneur in Residence program, through which experienced technology managers provide one-on-one management advice to clean-energy startups, has been renewed by NYSERDA. For more information see HTR's release.

Finally, to help staff several new programs coming on line, HTR is hiring a business-development analyst, and has rolled out a revamped website and brand-new logo!