Apex Offshore Wind, a national developer of wind-energy facilities, has selected our supporting member the SUNY Fredonia Technology Incubator in Dunkirk for a new regional office.

Apex, which has another NYS office in Poughkeepsie, has completed more than $1 billion in wind-power projects nationally, including the 20 MW Steel Winds project on the site of the former Bethlehem Steel mill in Lackawanna. The company cited the incubator's proximity to Dunkirk harbor on wind-friendly Lake Erie as a strategic advantage.

Apex will be the 10th tenant and key strategic anchor of the incubator. For more information, please see the university's news release here or attached as a pdf.

Separately, the Dunkirk Observer website covered the graduation of three non-profit and social-venture tenants incubated under the university's HUD-sponsored Dunkirk-Fredonia Partnerships and Center for Social Entrepreneurship.

The three organizations are moving across the street to the handsomely renovated and privately owned Chadwick Bay Lofts.

In its latest annual report (see p. 14 here), the Buffalo-based John R. Oishei Foundation devotes a full page to the $300,000 challenge grant it made in 2009 to our supporting member the SUNY Fredonia Techology Incubator in the City of Dunkirk.

Released simultaneously were two Youtube videos, embedded after the page break, featuring Fredonia President Dennis Hefner and Professor of Geosciences Gary Lash. We have previously mentioned the Oishei Foundation challenge grant here and Dr. Lash's research on the Marcellus Shale here.

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Two new tenants of our supporting member the SUNY Fredonia Technology Incubator were introduced during a visit to Dunkirk by Rep. Brian Higgins (D-27), who also announced release of $150,000 more in federal funding for the brand-new, 21,000 square-foot facility. The two new tenants are:

• Advanced Conservation Technology (ACT), a supplier of environmentally conscious building materials relocated from Philadelphia by its founders, two brothers who are themselves natives of the Dunkirk, and
• TexTivia, headed by local entrpreneurs who are creating marketing, gaming and contest products for mobile phones.

For detailed information, see the university news release (also attached) or coverage in the Dunkirk Observer and The Post-Journal of Jamestown. 

Incubator tenant/clients assisted by our members Binghamton University Start Up Suites and the University at Buffalo Technology Incubator were among about a hundred university spinoff success stories highlighted in a report released by the Science Coalition, a national nonprofit formed by several dozen research universities.

The incubator clients at Binghamton highlighted were:

• NanoMas Technologies, Inc., headquartered at Binghamton with manufacturing facilities in nearby Endicott. This nanotech company is working on applications in printable electronics, renewable energy, and semiconductor chip-packaging.
• Webscalers, which is developing a large-scale, extensible metasearch engine technology.

Among the three Buffalo spinoffs highlighted was the Technology Incubator's anchor tenant ONY, Inc., which produces a lung surfactant to prevent respiratory distress in premature infants.

The Science Coalition report also highlighted NYS spinoffs from Cornell and New York Universities.

Directed Energy, the NYSERDA-sponsored clean-energy incubator that shares space with our supporting member the UB Technology Incubator, successfully produced a workshop for clean-energy entrepreneurs on Smart Grid Opportunities. The event featured Robert Catell, the former National Grid and Keyspan CEO who is now chairman of the NYS Smart Grid Consortium. Please see The Buffalo News for additional coverage.

B. Thomas Mancuso, CEO of our member Mancuso Business Development Group — a pioneer of business incubation worldwide and operator of nearly 3 million square feet of small-business space across a wide swath of upstate — was one of 23 alumni of the state's private colleges honored by the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities. Tom is a graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology. For the cIcu press release, follow the previous link or here for Tom's profile. Congratulations, Tom! 

Dr. Hikoko Sato, a technology-transfer specialist representing a consortium of 10 universities and two technology-licensing centers in Japan, has begun a four-month training residency at our supporting member the SUNY Fredonia Technology Incubator, in the City of Dunkirk. For the official university news release, click the first link.

Dr. Sato's residency is funded by the participating Japanese institutions and the national Ministry of Economics, Trade and Industry (METI). One of her goals is to bring back to Japan a better understanding of the role of university-affiliated incubators within the SUNY system for intellectual-property management and technology licensing.

While she is in residence, Dr. Sato will also examine ways to connect university faculty and incubator tenants to opportunities for collaboration and cross-licensing with members of her consortium.

Our supporting member SUNY Fredonia Technology Incubator held a grand opening ceremony for its new 21,000 square-foot, two-story facility on Central Avenue in Dunkirk. (Fact sheet including major funding sources here, and photo gallery here.) The happy event was covered by the Dunkirk Observer, the Buffalo News, and Buffalo Business First. Congratulations to all!