Michael F. Easley
Governor
State of North Carolina
Office of the Governor
Governor's Press Office
State Capitol, Raleigh, NC 27603-8001
(919) 733-5612 - Toll Free 1-800-662-7005
FAX (919) 733-5166
For Release: IMMEDIATE Contact: Seth Effron
Date: June 26, 2006 Phone: 919/ 733-5612
GOV. EASLEY ANNOUNCES NEARLY $700,000 IN INNOVATION GRANTS FOR 16 BUSINESSES
One North Carolina Small Business Fund Encourages and Enables Innovation
RALEIGH – Gov. Mike Easley today announced that 16 North Carolina companies have been awarded a total of $696,000 in new innovation grants under the new One North Carolina Small Business Fund. The grants are designed to help small businesses conduct research and develop technology in an effort to bring new, cutting-edge products to the marketplace.
“These grants enable North Carolina’s small businesses to conduct the research and technology development that will generate the kinds of innovation critical to the future growth of our state’s economy,” Easley said. “The One North Carolina Small Business Fund helps further position North Carolina as the nation’s top entrepreneurial state and as a leader in the global marketplace. This program is just one more reason that our state is ranked No.1 for business climate.”
The One North Carolina Small Business Fund was proposed by Easley and approved by the General Assembly last year with $1 million for the first round of grants to help provide companies with needed resources to pursue original, pioneering ideas. The governor’s proposed budget for 2006-2007 recommends an additional $5 million for the program. Funding to continue the program is also included in the budget bills that have been passed by the N.C. House of Representatives and Senate.
For a business to be considered for a One North Carolina Small Business Fund grant, it must already have qualified for a federal Small Business Innovation Research or a Small Business Technology Transfer award. Under this year’s guidelines, the state matches up to half the federal money, with a $50,000 maximum per grant.
The first grants have been awarded to:
• 3F of Apex: $50,000 to develop a small, lightweight device that would help parachutists extricate themselves from their harness during an emergency. The project is sponsored by the U.S. Air Force.
• Advanced Liquid Logic Inc. of Research Triangle Park: $34,782 to develop a digital microfluidic lab-on-a-microchip to perform a broad spectrum of automated diagnostic tests on minute-sized samples. The project is sponsored by NASA.
• Alderon Biosciences of Durham: $50,000 to develop inexpensive sensors and instruments for use in poor regions of the world to provide better and low-cost ways to determine HIV viral load, which is an important indicator of the severity of infection and helps in determining the therapies for HIV-infected persons. The project is sponsored by the National Institutes for Health.
• CryoFacets of Raleigh: $49,998 for a program to develop a system to collect single cell types for a variety of clinical applications, such as transfusion medicine, vaccine development, tissue culture, and pathogen detection, in a single processing step. The project is sponsored by the National Institutes of Health.