Governor eager to recruit top-line researchers

Figuring that a healthy economy follows really smart people, Gov. Jim Gibbons wants to invest $10 million into an effort to draw world-class researchers to Nevada.

The governor's proposal, which got a quick mention toward the end of his State of the State address a couple of weeks ago, would put the $10 million in to recruiting world-class researchers to work at universities and organizations such as the Desert Research Institute.

The thinking, Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki said a few days later, is that the big-name researchers will bring their teams with them. And the state administration figures that some of the research will spin out of universities and research institutes to provide the germ of new industries.

The Nevada program would be modeled on the Georgia Research Alliance, which has invested some $400 million since 1990 in a program to attract 50 eminent scholars and create laboratories for research and innovation.

The results, which Gibbons calls "hugely successful," include the creation of 5,000 technology related jobs and the development of about 120 technology companies in Georgia.

Said Krolicki, who oversees the state's economic development efforts as lieutenant governor, "Nevada is even more ripe for that opportunity. We just need a game plan and some money."

The state should feel some urgency to widen its base of technology companies, Krolicki said, as it needs to find ways to provide homegrown jobs for the 36,000 Millennium scholars who will graduate from colleges and universities in Nevada in the next few years.

"We will be incredibility shortsighted to do the Millennium Scholarship and not have the economy to keep them here," he said.

But details of the Nevada program remain to be hammered out, and observers said a couple of big questions need to be addressed.

The largest question, Krolicki said, is the development of an independent governing board that can make clear-eyed decisions about the best investments in world-class researchers.

"The governance model is key," he said.

And Chuck Alvey, the president and chief executive officer of the Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada, said organizers need to ensure that the point of the program moving research out of the lab and into the private sector stays in the spotlight.

That means, he said, that channels of communication between the state's research initiative and its economic development agencies need to be strong.

While details of the Nevada research alliance still need to be worked out, Alvey said the effort appears to have some potential to fit closely with EDAWN's Target2010 strategy to strengthen northern Nevada's economy.

For instance, he said, one of the industries to be targeted by EDAWN in coming years is clean energy a field that's likely to see heavy research that might be commercialized.

Another key piece, Krolicki said, is the source of funding for the research initiative.

The money that Gibbons proposes for the program unclaimed property receipts probably could be used to create public-private joint ventures and partnerships, Krolicki said. The state ordinarily isn't allowed to get into business deals with private companies.