Daily Business Report-April 1, 2020
Nuffer Smith Tucker principals Price Adams (left), Teresa Siles and Mary Correia-Moreno
Nuffer Smith Tucker, San Diego’s oldest
public relations firm, has new owners
by Rick Griffin in Times of San Diego
Nuffer Smith Tucker, considered San Diego’s oldest operating public relations agency, has changed hands.
Three long-time employees, including Teresa Siles, president, and Mary Correia-Moreno and Price Adams, both with the executive VP title, have purchased the agency from Nola Trumpfheller, widow of the late Bill Trumpfheller, who passed away from cardiac arrest on Dec. 29, 2016.
Trumpfheller joined NST as an intern in 1986 and became president in 2000. When he passed at age 53, he was NST’s president and CEO. More than 800 family and friends filled San Diego State University’s Montezuma Hall in January 2017 for a celebration of life service.
Financial terms were not disclosed.
Soon to start its 46th year in business, NST currently has 20 employees and had 2019 billings of $3.9 million. Offices are located at 4045 Third Ave. in downtown San Diego.
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California’s new health corps: students and retired doctors
Gov. Gavin Newsom has called on recently retired doctors and soon-to-be-graduated medical and nursing students to join the California Health Corps to help care for COVID-19 patients.
Over the past four days, the number of Californians being treated for the virus in ICUs tripled and the number of hospitalizations doubled. Not only will the state need an extra 50,000 hospital beds by mid-May, it will also need a “human capital surge,” the governor said.
Newsom: “If you’re a nursing school student or medical school student, we need you. If you just retired in the last few years, we need you. If you are looking to expand your scope of practice … we need you.”
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Cubic partners with University of Alabama
to test emergency ventilator device
Cubic Corporation has entered a partnership agreement with the University of Alabama in Huntsville College of Nursing to use the Learning and Technology Resource Center’s (LTRC) Human Patient Simulator iStan to test an emergency ventilator device the company is developing in anticipation of ventilator shortages arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. Cubic’s Huntsville operations is the main development and manufacturing facility for its Cubic Mission Solutions business division’s GATR satellite communication and networking systems.
The GATR inflatable satellite antenna is a lightweight, versatile satellite terminal extensively used across the Department of Defense to quickly establish communications for multi-domain operations for any mission, anywhere. The GATR team has repurposed off-the-shelf inflation components of the ISA to develop the compact VentiGATR prototype that is being used for testing.
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Surfer fined $1,000 for ignoring
coronavirus closure in Manhattan Beach
A man received a $1,000 citation for surfing in Manhatthan Beachon Saturday after he ignored numerous warnings by police and lifeguards cautioning him not to go in the water because of the coronavirus beach closures.
Manhattan Beach Police Sgt. Mike Sistoni said it was the only citation for failing to follow the stay-at-home orders the department had issued.
“Everybody else was in compliance,” Sistoni said. “People have been pretty good about it.”
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SDSU ecologist receives prestigious
Moore Foundation Award
by Padma Nagappan |SDSU
For more than 20 years, Forest Rohwer has been diving, exploring and studying coral reefs in tropical waters around the world. The San Diego State University viral ecologist is particularly interested in viral symbiosis, a process by which organisms and ecosystems adapt to changing conditions by forming ecological units with different viruses.
He is one of 15 scientists from different research institutions around the world chosen by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to receive investigator awards to pursue research under the Symbiosis in Aquatic Systems Initiative (SASI). This vibrant international cohort with deep expertise in their respective fields will receive five years of unrestricted support to pursue innovative research that has high potential for significant advances in aquatic symbiosis.
“The investigator awards are expected to push the frontier of aquatic symbiosis research by providing ample support for brilliant scientists who will take risks that drive creative work,” said Sara Bender, program officer of SASI.
Rohwer will receive $2 million to explore whether there are a set of viral genes that will help coral reefs adapt to climate change conditions such as warming ocean surface temperatures and ocean acidification. The viruses he studies are bacteriophage, which infect and replicate inside bacteria, and can be both evolutionary agents as well as opportunistic pathogens.
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Coronavirus massive simulations
completed on supercomputer
by Jorge Salazar |UC San Diego
Scientists are preparing a massive computer model of the coronavirus that they expect will give insight into how it infects in the body. They’ve taken the first steps, testing the first parts of the model and optimizing code on the Frontera supercomputer at the University of Texas at Austin.
The knowledge gained from the full model can help researchers design new drugs and vaccines to combat the coronavirus.
UC San Diego’s Rommie Amaro is leading efforts to build the first complete all-atom model of the SARS-COV-2 coronavirus envelope, its exterior component.
“If we have a good model for what the outside of the particle looks like and how it behaves, we’re going to get a good view of the different components that are involved in molecular recognition,” said Amaro, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry.
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Salk Institute appoints Leona Flores
as executive director of Salk Cancer Center
The Salk Institute announced the hiring of Leona Flores, as executive director of the Salk Cancer Center, to help oversee administrative and scientific management functions as a member of its leadership team and to provide decision strategy support to the Cancer Center’s director.
Established in 1970 and one of only seven National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated research cancer centers in the country, the Salk Cancer Center uses innovative and collaborative approaches to tackle some of the most pressing challenges facing cancer biologists today.
Flores recently served as director of Research Development for San Diego State University’s Research Foundation. In that role, which she held since 2018, Flores enhanced the research enterprise of the institution through funding opportunities, training workshops and strategic planning for extramural research proposals. Prior to that, she held a similar position from 2012 to 2018 at UC San Diego’s NCI-Designated Moores Comprehensive Cancer Center, where she successfully initiated collaborative efforts with scientific, engineering, and clinical teams for grant submissions and developed functional cross-disciplinary research teams of scientific/clinical faculty leaders and researchers. During her time at Moores Cancer Center, she had direct involvement in two rounds of renewal of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Center Grant.
During her tenure at Moores, she also served as associate editor of Cancer Prevention Research, an American Association for Cancer Research publication.
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La Jolla Institute for Immunology to host
Coronavirus Immunotherapy Clearinghouse
La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) has been awarded a $1.73 million grant by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to establish a Coronavirus Immunotherapy Consortium (CoVIC) as part of the foundation’s global efforts to stem the tide of the current coronavirus outbreak, the Institute announced. Antibody therapies are often the first novel therapies advanced for an emerging infectious disease.
Headquartered at LJI, CoVIC will serve as a clearinghouse to understand which antibodies are most effective against the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and to accelerate the research pipeline to provide immunotherapeutics in order to protect vulnerable individuals from severe manifestations of COVID-19 in all parts of the world including low-resource settings.
Read more…
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General Atomics installs new Predator
Mission Trainer at North Dakota site
General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. has installed a new Predator Mission Trainer (PMT) at its Flight Test and Training Center in Grand Forks, N.D. The aircraft flight simulator, produced by CAE, will be used to train operators of MQ-9 Block 5 Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA).
General Atomics offers a range of pilot and sensor operator training at the FTTC for operators of its family of RPA systems. The new PMT extends the training capability of the FTTC, which already features a Block 1 simulator and Ground Control Systems (GCS).
“The Predator Mission Trainer will be used to advance the quality and capability of our RPA training at the Flight Test and Training Center,” said David R. Alexander, president of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems. “The Predator Mission Trainer will increase training efficiency because it allows us to focus our training and repeat training events in the simulator more easily than on an actual flight system.”
