11.Yet the boom hasn’t radically altered the distribution of funding. In general, the top 100 institutions get four-fifths of the money, and everyone else shares the rest. There is no sign that this will change as funding growth slows. Yet from coast to coast, Cortright notes, relatively obscure universities continue to spin off research parks left, right and center, and local politicians are flush with money for scientific initiatives.
12.Florida is the fourth most populous U.S. state, and its economy and population are among the fastest-growing in the nation. But in 2000 – the year of the most recent census – it ranked 44th out of 50 in a league table of the number of research dollars that academic institutions attracted per head of population. The state’s best-known research facility is probably NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, home of the space shuttle and assembly point for the International Space Station. The University of Florida advertises its science program as “more than just Gatorade”, referring to the electrolyte-laced sports drink – the Gainesville university’s most famous invention that has generated $80 million in licensing income for the university.
13.The Scripps initiative is Jeb Bush's attempt to transform the state's scientific reputation in one fell swoop. He hopes that science can become a pillar of the state’s economy, providing better-paid jobs than the current big employers: tourism, military bases and citrus farming.
14.Scripps would be the largest of a number of science projects, from a small, existing medical-device industry to a 'high-technology corridor' stretching across the center of the state from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic and anchored by the University of Central Florida in Orlando and the University of South Florida in Tampa.
Attractive Prospect
15.The Scripps project isn't the first attempt to kick-start high technology in the 'sunshine state'. In 1990, Florida unexpectedly beat Massachusetts to host most of a national magnet laboratory, a facility supported by the National Science Foundation. The National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (NHMFL) is now well-established, with one site tucked behind Florida State University at Tallahassee, another at the University of Florida in Gainesville, and a third as Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
16.The NHMFL is a world leader in very powerful magnets. The Tallahassee site houses some of the world’s largest resistive and hybrid magnets, which look like outsized water heaters and use about 10% of Tallahassee’s entire power supply. The lab is used by some 1,000 researchers each year in various disciplines to investigate molecules and materials.
17.Greg Boebinger, who joined the NHMFL as director last year, was as surprised as anyone when Florida won the laboratory from its previous site at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “I was among the people who said: ‘What is this?’,” he admits, laughing. “One of the main reasons Florida got it was state support.” The state put up about $80 million to get the contract.
18.Boebinger is a great believer in the economic value of basic research. The magnet lab is like most scientific investments, he says: it repays into the community “an order of magnitude” more than it cost the state to build it. Federal funds for the NHMFL flow on into the local economy. An economic assessment conducted for the state last year by Florida State University’s Center for Economic Forecasting and Analysis reported that Florida had got back three-and-a-half times its initial investment in the facility.
19.The NHMFL has also been mentioned by Scripps officials as a possible collaborator. Pat Griffin, head of drug discovery for Scripps Florida, visited the facility in January to discuss this idea. Florida officials are betting that Scripps can replicates the magnet lab’s success on a far grander scale.
Sunny Outlook
20.Last September, at a meeting of the economic development organization Enterprise Florida, several speakers argued that Scripps could act as the centerpiece of a coordinated plan for the development of the life sciences in Florida. Presentation after presentation forecast a rosy scientific future for the sense. An analyst from Ernst & Young assured the audience, for example, that biotechnology in the United States was “clearly on the road to profitability for the first time”, and predicted it would reach that goal in 2008.
21.But some speakers were more cautious. Kenneth Kirby, now president of TransDermal Technoloies, said he had encountered difficulties in starting up his drug-delivery company in Lake Park, Florida. He identified a funding gap for start-ups in the state, saying that venture capital there is relatively under-developed. Another speaker hit a nerve by joking that Florida universities, conditioned by years of competitive football, can’t seem to collaborate very well.
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