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The
atmosphere at the Richmond Biotechnology Research
Park December 7 was electric. Gov. Mark R. Warner
stepped to the podium before Virginia state
Senators, Delegates, business leaders, university
presidents and faculty researchers to announce
over a half billion dollars to increase Virginia's
research power. Big bucks. High stakes pool,
indeed, as the Governor noted, given the dramatic
commitments made to R&D by universities in
neighboring states and in other world technology
centers.
Virginia
is playing for keeps, given the demands of the
future that reward innovation more than anything
else. He could have mentioned, too, the challenges
facing Virginia from suddenly shifting federal
R&D strategies. More details of Gov. Warner's
multi-year R&D strategy will be available
December 16, the date he makes public his budget
recommendations for FY2007-2008. But it is clear
that Mark Warner's broad $554 million announcement
(and a subsequent $27 million package announced to
boost modeling and simulation activity in Hampton
Roads) was made possible by his three solid years
of groundwork and the dramatic improvement in the
Commonwealth's revenue picture he drove in 1994.
The
package starts with the human capital-led strategy
recommended by the Governor's Virginia Research
and Technology Advisory Commission (VRTAC) in
2003. Virginia needs more star researchers at its
universities and equally important, the best and
brightest graduate students that every institution
competes for.
The
proposals include investments in specific
facilities, equipment and tools recommended by
Gov. Warner's biotechnology study group and his
research summit in 2003. True to his word that
Virginia funds always should leverage even larger
federal and private dollars in research, Gov.
Warner proposes $255 million to improve university
research facilities and faculty in Virginia.
Virginia
Tech, the University of Virginia, Virginia
Commonwealth University and George Mason
University then will commit up to $299 million to
match it. The universities will use state funds as
magnets. The result will be a bioscience facility
and biocontainment lab at GMU, a medical research
building and Massey Cancer Center addition at VCU,
a new clinical cancer center at UVA and a critical
technology building and infectious disease lab at
Virginia Tech.
More
importantly, in the Governor's words, "This
funding will further our advances in biomedical
research and help lead to potential breakthroughs
in treating cancer, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and
other serious diseases." The modeling and
simulation initiative will extend the investments
to Old Dominion University, Eastern Virginia
Medical School and Tidewater Community College,
building on the Virginia Modeling and Simulation
Initiative announced early in 2005. Think not only
new video games, but companies exploring new
health technologies or homeland security
scenarios.
If
enacted in full by the General Assembly, the
R&D package will become as important a piece
of the Warner legacy as any other. But credit
isn't going to be limited. Republican majorities
in the General Assembly also could add R&D to
the record of responsible and responsive governing
they want to build for the future. Maybe that's
why Republican luminaries, such as Senators
Charles Hawkins, R-Chatham, and John Watkins,
R-Midlothian, led the endorsements at the
announcement.
Other
goals of the proposal support collaborative
research among Virginia universities and a type of
"Governor's Technology Opportunity Fund"
to allow the Commonwealth to take immediate
advantage of unique research opportunities. This
kind of rapid response mechanism is long overdue
in Virginia.
Consider,
for example, the tug-of-war now growing over the
future of federal R&D agencies -- the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the
Office of Naval Research, the Air Force Office of
Scientific Research and the Army Research Office
-- now located in Northern Virginia, specifically
in Arlington County. While its recommendations
about Master Jet Base, Naval Air Station Oceana in
Virginia Beach have gotten a lot of attention, the
Base Closure and Realignment Commission (BRAC)
also recommended moving 20,000 jobs out of
Arlington County. Potentially more important than
the empty office space that results in Crystal
City may be the empty minds if DARPA, now in a
building in Ballston that does not meet new
security requirements, moves not to another
location in Ballston, but to Maryland. What if
other federal research agencies followed?
As
Frank Shafroth, Arlington County's director of
inter-governmental relations, recently told
reporters, "Because of those facilities,
Virginia gets - in terms of research and
development dollars - more than twice as much on a
per capita basis [as] any other state. So if those
facilities move to another state, it will have an
enormous economic impact on Virginia."
The
Governor's announcements are the kind of state
commitment federal decision-makers need to hear if
they are to bend over backwards to keep federal
R&D agencies in the Commonwealth. More
discussions about the specifics of the Virginia
R&D initiative are still ahead, of course. But
it appears the Commonwealth has settled the
question of whether the state needs an R&D
initiative at all.
Delegate
Chris Jones, R-Suffolk, summed it up for his
region, "The significant investments that the
Governor announced today ... will pay dividends
for years to come in transforming the Hampton
Roads economy." Arlington County, Richmond,
Blacksburg, Charlottesville and every other part
of Virginia would welcome similar commitments in
2006 not only to sink a ball in the side pocket,
but to run the table.
--
December 12, 2005
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