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Three student teams from Missouri University of Science and Technology went head-to-head with others from across the region during the Idea-to-Product competition, hosted March 7 and 8 by Saint Louis University.

Missouri S&T undergraduate student John Gier of Marshalltown, Iowa, graduate student Paul Robinette of Rolla, and Missouri S&T alumnus Ryanne Dolan, now a Ph.D. student at the University of Missouri-Columbia, represented Missouri S&T at the competition. There were a total of 20 student teams at the competition, which were assigned to one of five different tracks to present to panels of judges March 7. The best teams then were selected to present ideas to a different panel March 8. Among Missouri S&T’s competitors were students from SLU, Washington University, the University of Illinois-Champaign, the Illinois Institute of Technology and Missouri State University.

Jack Kerouac played football at Columbia University, but he wasn't really the MBA type. Fortunately for UMR, Joe Winters is the MBA type. In addition to being the first student admitted to UMR's new MBA program, Winters has joined the football team as a quarterback. Winters played football in the Ivy League (he tossed a touchdown pass against Harvard last season) and earned a bachelor's degree at Columbia, but he still has one year of eligibility remaining. So this season he's suiting up for the Miners and going to graduate school.

Ever wonder where the state's economic development prowess is located? John Gardner, vice president for research and economic development for the University of Missouri, makes a compelling case that research universities -- like the University of Missouri -- are now the dominant source of cutting-edge scientific discoveries.

Consider the numbers of new Missouri businesses formed, or where the patents were filed from 1975-1999 with data from the Department of Economic Development ... They are clustered around the two urban centers of Kansas City and St. Louis (which host public and private research universities), the University of Missouri campuses in Columbia and Rolla, and counties which have a presence of public higher education.

Story via John's Journal.

Yesterday afternoon Keith Strassner, executive director of the office of technology commercialization and economic development at UMR, spoke to members of University Advancement about his office's new role on campus. His presentation was similar to the one he gave the University of Missouri Board of Curators last month, but my favorite discovery from his talk was this site, which lists UMR patents and disclosures. Enjoy!

Keith D. Strassner, director of UMR's Office of Technology Commercialization and Economic Development -- OTCED for short -- wants to foster a "culture of entrepreneurship" on campus to help move UMR's applied research out of the labs and into the marketplace.

Strassner addressed the University of Missouri Board of Curators this afternoon as part of a session on the university's role in economic development. He described his office's mission as creating a "center of excellence" for technology-based economic development and pointed to UMR's development of a chrome-free inhibitor that is now being used to help prime the Air Force's entire fleet of F-15s.

"We have one of the finest R&D organizations in the state and nation across many technologies and markets," Strassner said. "What we were missing was the marketing department to bring this technology into the marketplace." The OTCED, he added, "provides that front door" to sell UMR research. "This allows us to work with faculty and student entrepreneurs as well as small and large business to accelerate the creation of business opportunities."

Forget playlists and think potential pollution.

iPods, cell phones and other electronic products often contain toxic materials, a growing environmental threat as Americans throw away roughly two million electronic products each year. According to Reuters, California Assembly Member Lori Saldana from San Diego has introduced a bill that would require manufacturers to stop using hazardous substances in electronic devices sold in California within two years.

It's not exactly a new idea. Three years ago, UMR's own Venkata Allada was talking about the idea of industrial ecology with Visions and sharing how companies should design products that can be easily disassembled for reuse, recycling or servicing once they reach “end-of-life usefulness."

The idea seems to be catching on. Starting this July, the European Union’s Restriction on Hazardous Substances Directive will make “lead free" a requirement for EU member countries and for those wanting to sell electrical and electronic equipment in the EU.

According to a 2000 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report, only about 9 percent of discarded electronic material is recycled or reclaimed for reuse in manufacturing; the rest contributes to the lead, cadmium and mercury contamination in the nation’s soils.

Bill Daughton, chair of UMR's engineering management and systems engineering department, recently reviewed journalist Tom Friedman's popular tome on globalization, The World Is Flat, for the American Society for Engineering Management's Engineering Management Journal. He writes:

At first glance a title such as The World Is Flat sounds like a gimmick. If it weren’t for the credentials of Thomas Friedman as a New York Times columnist, it might be tempting to dismiss this work as such and not even read it. However, in retrospect, that would have been a mistake.

It's your worst Dilbert nightmare come to life: The one-hour meeting drags on and on. Ten minutes over, 20 minutes over -- and you're not even halfway through the agenda yet.

Two UMR professors feel your pain, and they're working on a solution. Coming soon to a conference room near you, it's the virtual facilitator, a software program that will help meeting organizers stick to their agendas so you can get back to the cube in time to finish your TPS reports.

If your hometown NFL team wins the Super Bowl, that rocks! Heck, living in a small Midwestern town, I think having an NFL team in my hometown would rock.