This month’s topic: Entrepreneurship & Leadership in Life Sciences: Find Your Place in This Growing Industry.
The event took place at the New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences, on the second floor, at 701 Ellicott St at Virginia Street right here at the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus (BNMC) in downtown Buffalo.
Why post about these events? Because I have identified this as the current top area of business growth in Buffalo. This seems to be such a gigantic opportunity not just for entrepreneurs, leaders, scientific types and career changers, but also for all of the support personnel that go hand in hand with that growth. Thankfully, Buffalo is not only growing in this industry, it’s growing in ways that feed off this industry. And if these jobs aren’t filled here, they will get filled elsewhere, and we may lose those jobs forever.
Dr. Marnie LaVigne is the Director of Business Development, at the University of Buffalo Center for Advanced Biomedical and Bioengineering Technology. She’s our first speaker. It seems to me that Dr Lavigne has done more to grow the Life Sciences industry in Buffalo than anyone else since she came here in 2001.
Wear a hard hat! Get a tour of the new Innovation Center
Dr. LaVigne mentioned that anyone interested in new research and development for life sciences and biotechnology companies (all part of the thriving Buffalo Niagara Medical Center) can tour the Innovation Center on May 21. The Innovation Center is located at 640 Ellicott St, at the former Trico Products Building, between Goodell and Virginia Streets. Participants will receive an update on current progress, including renovation, build-out and tenant recruitment from the Chief Operating Officer of the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, Patrick Whalen. Everyone will also be asked to wear a hard hat – if you’ve been looking for your chance to get a first hand glimpse into the world of Buffalo bio-tech, here’s your chance. Registration is encouraged by emailing Virginia Best at vkbest@buffalo.edu.
What exactly do you mean by Life Sciences?
Dr. LaVigne goes on to define Life Sciences as the use of any technology to improve the health and well being of our population. The sciences in Life Sciences cover the biological, physical and computational sciences, not just lab sciences. Industries covered in life sciences range from biological (drug companies, therapeutics), ultradiagnostics, research and development, bioinformatics and medical devices.
Buffalo just hosted the largest trade mission ever in the history of New York State
Buffalo is at the hub of the golden horseshoe, with 650 biomedical firms within less than an hour and a half drive. In the Buffalo area itself there are 140 biomedical firms employing more than 6,000 people. The hub of the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus is employing over 8,000 people! 50% of the companies are in the more traditional manufacturing industry, but many are evolving into advanced manufacturing. Just yesterday, Buffalo hosted the largest trade mission ever in the history of New York State with over 60 countries represented, and with over 120 companies attending.
In the early 1900’s Buffalo had a tremendous entrepreneurial culture
At this point in time, we still do not have the rich entrepreneurial culture that we need. In the early 1900’s Buffalo had a tremendous entrepreneurial culture and a real sense of innovation. There have been times since then we can point to further discoveries and say that our region is rich in innovativeness, thanks to industries such as life sciences and bio tech. However we must realize, even in the life sciences, that we don’t necessarily have the enough strong and robust leaders and entrepreneurs to take some of our technologies forward as aggressively as possible. It’s hard to believe that here is new technology, right now, sitting on the shelf because we have limited capabilities to harness the effort in order to position it into the marketplace as it needs to be.
Where do I get started with Life Sciences in Buffalo?
Where can we go as a region to make this a real entrepreneurial environment? As an individual, where do I get started? Well, you can go to the ISCI Western New York website anytime, and it will give you up to the moment information. It offers a doorway for those people who want to get involved in Life Sciences. Just look for the tagline: Stay Here. Go Far. Careers in Life Sciences. Patrick Emmerling (formerly an intern – earned his PhD in Chemistry at the University of Buffalo, and is finishing his MBA currently) actually created the mapping of a career on the website. The jobs are separated into seven different tracks. What the job is (from entry lever to the highest level), how much it pays, the type of training needed, job description, and where the work is.
Dr. Marnie Lavigne shows the Mystery Box to be given out to every middle and high school in Western New York
How do we get our young students interested in this sort of career path? At such a young age? This is not a small task – there is a team of people working on distributing this program. The information is physically going out in something called a “mystery box”, or the Career Pathways Kit, to every middle and high school in Western New York this fall. It allows the schools to distribute this program through their science classes (and via guidance counselors) so that there is actually a resource where the counselors and teachers don’t need to know all of the details, but enough to have the individual get started on a career exploration. Programming is also offered on the website, as well as at the Educational Opportunity Center at Washington and Mohawk streets. There is also a six week training program that is a little more extensive. The Millard Fillmore College and the University of Buffalo School of Management join the Center of Excellence in this initiative.
Taking an idea from its beginning to startup
On top of everything else, there is an Entrepreneurs Bootcamp, a.k.a. the Pre-Seed Workshop. This is its third year, and it is coming up in June. The idea is to put a team of people together to help move technology-based business concepts forward. The team had a phenomenal year last year when it helped to move Dr. David Dugan’s Oral Health Innovations (a dental device company at the Pre-Seed Workshop) forward into a successful path of commercialization. Now that’s what I’m talking about!
Next time…
On my next post on Buffalo Life Sciences, I will summarize comments made by the second speaker, Larry Gingrich, the associate dean of Millard Fillmore College (division of continuing and professional studies that was created just three years ago). He will talk about new programming that is available for individuals. If you enjoyed this post on Life Sciences in Buffalo, perhaps you would like to view previous posts on this series with Acceleron Pharma and Wilson Greatbatch. Upcoming events at the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus can be viewed on their events page.