GSA Technology Council

Fluor Corporation announced today the opening of its Alaska office in Anchorage to support projects in the region. An initial staff of 50 employees, backed by Fluor’s global workforce, will perform engineering, procurement, construction and maintenance services for the oil and gas, mining, and government sectors.

The office will be located at 3800 Centerpoint Drive, Suite 200 in midtown Anchorage.

The company will host a grand opening at the new office location in Anchorage on August 27, 2008, from 4 to 7 p.m.

Many of Fluor’s key clients in the oil and gas industry have expressed an interest in Fluor returning to Anchorage to support their increasing needs in the region. The Alaska office will offer operations that not only will support many of Fluor’s clients in Alaska, but also will serve strategic global interests at other arctic and sub-arctic project sites.

“Fluor has a long history of executing some of the most complex projects in the most challenging regions of the world,” said David Seaton, Fluor’s group president of Energy and Chemicals. “We will continue to serve the needs of our clients in the region, expand our resource base and work with the local community in Anchorage and throughout Alaska.”

Fluor will leverage its extensive experience in Alaska to support the growing engineering, procurement, construction and maintenance needs on the North Slope and throughout the state.

The most well-known project executed by Fluor in Alaska was the engineering, procurement and construction of the pump stations, remote gate valve sites and marine terminal of the Trans Alaska Pipeline System, one of the largest pipeline systems in the world, which delivers oil 800 miles from Alaska’s North Slope to the Port of Valdez.

via Fluor

Insurance brokerage and consulting firm Rosenfeld Einstein, a fast-growing insurance organization of the Southeast, has been ranked among South Carolina’s 20 Best Places to Work among companies with fewer than 250 employees, according to information compiled by SC BIZ magazine and Best Companies Group of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.  This is the second consecutive year that Rosenfeld Einstein has been honored.

The Best Places to Work in South Carolina program was designed to identify, recognize and honor the top employers in South Carolina, benefiting the state’s economy, its workforce and businesses. The list is made up of companies split into two groups: 20 small/medium sized companies (fewer than 250 employees) and 8 large sized companies (more than 250 employees).

Rosenfeld Einstein was ranked #3 in the 2007 Best Places to Work in South Carolina in the small/medium company category – the highest ranking attained by any Upstate firm.

via Rosenfeld Einstein

Adobe this morning announced the latest versions of their Photoshop Elements and Premier Elements products.  Photoshop Elements 7 is the latest in the line of Adobe’s popular photo-editing software while Premier 7 is a program for editing video.  Along with the release of their two newest versions of their software Adobe has also announced the availability for membership to Photoshop.com which will providing users with extended capabilities for the Photoshop Elements software with features like added templates and automatic online backup (with 20 GB of space).

The two updated software programs will be for sale priced $99.99 individually or $149.99 together.

via Adobe

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has awarded more than $500,000 in grants to Clemson University’s environmental engineering and earth sciences department to help broaden the pool of candidates needed in the environmental and safety arena of a burgeoning nuclear industry.

The U.S. NRC Nuclear Education Fellowship Grant is for $398,932, awarded to scientists Timothy DeVol, Robert Fjeld and Brian Powell.

“Because of a renewed interest in nuclear power in this country and the world, this grant will be used for funding graduate students who will become the next-generation nuclear workforce, specifically in radioactive waste disposal, radiochemistry and the environmental aspects of nuclear power generation,” said DeVol. “Expertise in these areas is a critical issue because of attrition as well as possible expansion of the nuclear power industry. Nuclear power is one part of an integrated approach to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and strive toward energy security.”

The NRC awarded a second grant of $125,151 for nuclear education and curriculum development with a goal of understanding and protecting the public and the environment from the harmful effects of radiation.

“The Nuclear Education and Curriculum Development Grant that we received last year was used to update much needed radiation-detection and measurement equipment for the teaching laboratories,” said DeVol. “This year, we’ll be developing a new course as well as expanding another course with advanced portable radiation spectroscopy systems that will be purchased with the grant. Grants like these keep our students at the cutting edge of technology but with a fundamental understanding of the underlying principles.”

The Nuclear Environmental Engineering and Science (NEES) program is a graduate-only academic program established in the 1980s within the department of environmental engineering and earth sciences at Clemson. It is a combination of classroom and laboratory instruction and research. The NEES program focuses on the environmental aspects of nuclear technologies, including environmental health physics, radioactive waste processing, environmental risk assessment, environmental radioactivity, radiation detection and measurement, environmental radiochemistry and environmental remediation.

Collexis Holdings Inc., a developer of semantic search and knowledge discovery software, announced today that it has partnered with Health Sciences South Carolina to launch the first virtual knowledge directory of health science research being conducted across the state by HSSC partner institutions. This is a major advancement, making South Carolina the first state in the nation to create a searchable directory of medical research and biomedical expertise.

HSSC is a unique statewide research collaborative composed of South Carolina’s three research universities and three largest health systems that is conducting collaborative biomedical research to improve health status, education, workforce development and economic wellbeing for all South Carolinians. HSSC strives to be an economic catalyst by attracting nationally prominent scientists, clinical trials of new drugs and medical devices and health-related companies to South Carolina, ultimately stimulating the state’s knowledge-based economy.

“Collexis’ technology will significantly benefit Health Sciences South Carolina by allowing its member institutions’ researchers and health professionals to remain abreast of all ongoing research across the state,” said HSSC president and CEO Dr. Jay Moskowitz. “This software is a critical component of the statewide information technology infrastructure HSSC is in the process of building. We look forward to the launch and are confident that it will further advance and support the research efforts of HSSC partner institutions, thereby improving the overall economic well-being, health status and workforce development of our state.”

The Collexis system was released to HSSC partner institutions this week. With a simple interface, any medical topic or researcher can be searched through the HSSC website and the results are a comprehensive list of South Carolina experts and their research. Additionally, experts who specialize in different research areas (like biologists and chemists studying cancer) can be identified to build teams necessary to address complex challenges in health research.

“We are excited to provide the technology for such a valuable initiative for Health Sciences South Carolina and the state of South Carolina,” said Collexis CEO Bill Kirkland. “While cutting edge institutions around the globe have adopted the Collexis system, including the National Institutes of Health, Johns Hopkins, Mayo Clinic and others, the South Carolina database is the first statewide system in the United States. Additionally, the mission and ultimate goal for HSSC is very similar to Collexis. We are both working to improve the health and wellbeing of the citizens of South Carolina and the global patient community.”

Speaker Bobby Harrell of the South Carolina House of Representatives added, “The collaboration between South Carolina-based Collexis and HSSC demonstrates the amazing research and technological advancements taking place throughout the state. What’s more, it reinforces the value of the investments we are making to South Carolina’s ever-growing knowledge-based economy.”

In a follow up effort, the Collexis and HSSC partnership is also working on ways to identify the patient expertise of all South Carolina physicians. “Matching the right physicians with the right colleague in research could bring the greatest discoveries for new treatments,” said Dr. Moskowitz. “This is truly the next evolution in collaborative research and discovery. HSSC and Collexis are on the cutting edge of the nation and the world in these advances.”

via Collexis

Acumen I.T., a software, consulting, hardware, and IT implementation provider announced today, a partnership with Mimosa Systems, a provider of Live Content Archiving solutions to  provide next-generation archiving solution for Acumen’s customers worldwide. The partnership combines Mimosa’s powerful email archiving and eDiscovery solutions with Acumen’s strong portfolio of IT products and services, including server virtualization and storage solutions. Together, the companies
will focus on delivering practical, cost effective offerings for the proactive collection, processing, review and management of electronically stored information.

“Our partnership with Acumen will enable us to provide customers with migration services that help them effectively prepare for eDiscovery by allowing them to migrate large amounts of data from backup tapes
and legacy data formats to the Mimosa NearPointTM archive making that data faster and more cost effective to discover,” said Christophe Culine, senior vice president of sales of Mimosa Systems. “We look
forward to working with Acumen, which has a deserved reputation as a leading provider of IT products and services for enterprises.”

“Mimosa’s advanced content archiving capabilities will be a tremendous complement to our service offerings,” said David Pence, CEO of Acumen I.T. “By pairing our I.T. products and services, including our
emphasis on server virtualization and storage, along with eDiscovery solutions with Mimosa NearPoint, we will be able to help clients to accurately and rapidly archive high volumes of historical data, while reducing their storage costs and improving overall data management.”

via Acumen

The Greenville Area Development Corporation (GADC), the county-chartered organization tasked with promoting and enhancing the economic growth of Greenville County, has announced that Anthony “Tony” Smith has joined the organization as project manager.
 
Smith joins the GADC team from the South Carolina Department of Commerce (SCDOC), where he served as Senior Manager of private finance and equity, and Director of Private Sector Finance, since joining the SCDOC in 1999.  Among his numerous accomplishments with SCDOC were his management of South Carolina’s $50 million legislative initiative that created the state’s Venture Capital Investment Authority, and establishment of reporting requirements for the state’s Capital Access Program. 
 
Smith also has assisted economic development projects requiring financial assistance for SCDOC that resulted in announcements of more than $255 million in capital investment and the addition of greater than 1,100 announced jobs to the state’s workforce during his tenure. 
 
Prior to his SC Department of Commerce responsibilities, Smith held various management positions with the Virginia Economic Development Partnership. 
 
Among Smith’s professional involvements are board positions with the Certified Development Corporation of South Carolina and the South Carolina Investor Network.  He has been an active member of the South Carolina Economic Developers Association, the Biotechnology Industry Organization, and a past executive committee member of InnoVenture.
 
Smith holds both Bachelor’s and Masters degrees from Virginia Commonwealth University.
 
In his project management role, Smith will market to and work with existing and prospective new businesses in Greenville County; help in the development of short and long range economic development plans and strategies; gather, interpret, and prepare data for studies and reports; and collaborate with other economic development agencies.
 
His additional responsibilities will include serving as the GADC’s lead recruiter for Life Sciences Industry organizations, leading life sciences cluster initiatives and serving as an expert resource.  Smith will also assume the role of project finance officer, advising GADC staff on methods of financing for capital-seeking clients, maintaining knowledge of financing resources, and fostering industry relationships to better support high-growth companies with capital needs.
 
“Tony is extremely knowledgeable about the state and Greenville County, and will play an important, participative role in helping attract quality jobs to this area,” said Jay Rogers, Chairman of the Board of the Greenville Area Development Corporation.   “His experience in global recruiting initiatives, coupled with his deep expertise and connections in the life sciences and finance and lending arenas, will deepen the capabilities of the GADC team in those areas.  Coupled with his experience working with entrepreneurial, high-growth companies, particularly in the technology arena, the GADC will be even better positioned to pursue better jobs and a brighter future for this area.”

via GADC

Clemson University is the 22nd best national public university in the country, according to the annual ranking by U.S.News & World Report. In a new category Clemson also received recognition as a school to watch.

Clemson is No. 2 among national public universities in the “up and coming” category as “a college that has recently made striking improvements or innovations — a school everyone should be watching,” according to the magazine.

The No. 22 ranking is the university’s highest ranking to date. Last year, Clemson was No. 27 among the 164 public, doctoral-granting institutions in the country. The climb in the rank is attributed to improvement in a number of areas at Clemson: the graduation rate has gone up from 75 percent to 78 percent; the freshman retention rate is up from 88 percent to 90 percent; and alumni giving increased from 27 percent to 28 percent. The university has more classes with fewer than 20 students and more freshmen — 52 percent — in the top 10 percent of their high school graduating classes.

A message from Clemson University President James Barker:

Complete rankings are published in U.S.News & World Report’s America’s Best Colleges 2009.

Aspiring Upstate entrepreneurs have an exciting resource to help them achieve their dream of business ownership. The Clemson University Small Business Development Center is pleased to announce a new interactive workshop designed to supply the information needed before taking the plunge. “JumpStart Your Business, Tips for Start Up Success” will explore the basics of what it takes to go into business, how to set-up a business, forms of business organization, legal requirements, the elements of an effective business plan, how to obtain financing and improve the odds of success, and the most important information to make informed business decisions. Pre-registration is required. Call 864.370.1545.

When: Thursday, September 18th, 2008; 6:30 – 8:00 pm

Where: University Center, 225 S. Pleasantburg Drive, Greenville

Investment: $25

For Information, visit www.clemson.edu/sbdc

We had another good crowd at Tech After Five. Watch the video and get a glimpse of who was there.