Daily Business Report-April 17, 2017
The Qualcomm Institute’s virtual-reality facilities have also been used for performances requiring 3D immersion, like this piece from 2016 by Music professor and QI composer in residence, Katharina Rosenberger. (Credit: UCSD News Center)
Qualcomm Institute Invites Proposals
for Tech-Infused Performing Arts Series
The Qualcomm Institute (QI) at the University of California, San Diego has launched its fifth annual invitation to faculty and students to propose residencies culminating in performances or presentations of works and research in visual arts, music, theater and dance, as well as technology disciplines.
The Call for Proposal was published online April 10 on the website of QI’s Initiative for Digital Exploration of Arts and Sciences (IDEAS).
The competition will result in the selection of works for residencies and performances during the upcoming 2017-2018 IDEAS season. QI is the UC San Diego Division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2). The winning events will be staged and/or presented in the institute’s high-tech venues in Atkinson Hall on the UC San Diego campus.
Proposals will be judged on the quality of each submission; the proposed impact of the critical engagement; the extent to which the artist proposes to use QI’s unique audio, video and performance space; the multidisciplinary nature of the work; and the general relevance of the work to the IDEAS mission for digital exploration of arts and sciences.
The IDEAS program was launched in 2013 to encourage UC San Diego artists, technologists, and scientists to take advantage of the Qualcomm Institute’s advanced audio-visual facilities, services and personnel in developing and staging new or existing works.
The Call for Proposals for the 2017-2018 IDEAS season is now available online. All proposals must be submitted no later than 11:59 p.m. on Monday, May 15, and all proposals must be submitted through the online submissions form.
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University of San Diego to Start
Annual Innovation Week on April 28
The University of San Diego brings together social entrepreneurs, upstart innovators and thought leaders for Innovation Week — a celebration starting on the USD campus April 28 to help students and community members go from ‘wild dream’ to ‘wildly successful.’
Innovation Weeks kicks off on April 28 with a keynote address from Tom Love, founder and executive chairman of Love’s Travel Stops and Country Stores, who will speak at noon in Manchester Auditorium about his entrepreneurial path to success. Love’s talk is free and open to the public. Paid parking is available in the West parking garage.
Love and his wife, Judy, started their stores in 1964 with one small location in a tiny western Oklahoma town. Today, Love’s has more than 420 locations across the country in 41 states and employs more than 17,000 people. Love’s is recognized each year by Forbes as one of America’s largest privately owned companies.
On May 3, Innovation Week continues with final pitches for the seventh annual Social Innovation Challenge in the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice building, starting at 10 a.m. Judges will evaluate the finalists’ six-minute social innovation pitches to determine how to allocate seed funding for social impact. The winners will be announced and prizes awarded on May 5 at the Social Innovation Challenge Award Ceremony starting at 4:30 p.m. in the KIPJ Theater.
More than 70 proposals were submitted for the USD School of Business’s sixth annual Venture Vetting (V2) Competition. On May 4, entrepreneurial students from San Diego as well as from Mexico and Uruguay will pitch their ideas in front of a panel of distinguished angel investors to win more than $30,000 in funding. V2 starts at 5 p.m.
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Cal Competes Awardees to
Create 735 Jobs in San Diego
Thirteen San Diego companies were approved to receive over $9.5 million in tax credits during the most recent round of Cal Competes, a state tax credit designed for companies that want to stay and grow in California. These companies, including NuVasive and Psyonix, will create an estimated 735 jobs over the next five years.
The Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development announced that the California Competes Tax Credit committee approved $91.4 million in tax credits for 114 companies expanding and creating jobs in California. The awards will help these companies create a projected 8,223 jobs and generate over $828 million in total investment across California.
Click here to view the complete list of approved companies and award amounts.
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Chemists Devise Simple Method
for Making Drugs for Lung Diseases
Chemists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have developed a broad and strikingly easy method for synthesizing a class of molecules that have demonstrated value as pharmaceuticals for treatment of lung diseases.
The difficulty of preparing these compounds — boronic acids and closely related molecules known as boronate esters — has greatly limited their use in the pharmaceutical industry, and to date there are only three FDA-approve drugs in this category.
With the new method, published last week in the journal Science, chemists can take abundant, inexpensive, structurally diverse compounds known as carboxylic acids and convert them easily into similarly structured boronic acids and related compounds.
“Carboxylic acids are the ideal starting material for synthesizing boronic acids, but until now there hasn’t been any method for getting from one to the other,” said principal investigator Phil S. Baran, Darlene Shiley Professor of Chemistry at TSRI.
Among the boronic acid-derived molecules Baran and his team made in demonstrating the new method were several novel compounds that are now being investigated further as potential treatments for COPD and other lung disorders.
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Cal State San Marcos to Become
Smoke-Free Campus in the Fall
Cal State San Marcos, which already limits tobacco use to designated smoking areas, will become a completely smoke- and tobacco-free campus beginning in fall 2017. Electronic cigarettes will also be banned.
“Becoming a smoke- and tobacco-free campus protects and promotes the health and well-being of our campus community,” said Kimberly Pulvers, a CSUSM associate professor of psychology who has researched addiction and tobacco use extensively. “The smoke- and tobacco-free campus initiative supports the mission and values of our university, prepares our students to enter workforces which are increasingly smoke and tobacco-free, and supports environmental sustainability and litter reduction.”
CSU Chancellor Timothy White issued an Executive Order on April 7 implementing a systemwide smoke- and tobacco-free environment for campuses effective Sept. 1.
CSUSM will be aided in its effort through a recently awarded $20,000 grant as part of the American Cancer Society and the CVS Health Foundation’s Tobacco-Free Generation Campus Initiative, a $3.6 million effort to accelerate and expand smoke- and tobacco-free campuses. The funding will be used for educational material, supplies and personnel essential to implement and evaluate the initiative. Monthly educational events promoting the program through a variety of channels already is under way.
