News

Tech Corridor Looking Bright
By The Journal Editorial Board

A group of local governments, chambers of commerce and businessmen formed Black Hills Vision in 2003 with the idea of eventually creating 7,500 jobs in the Black Hills region. One of their goals of creating a technology corridor is becoming closer to reality with the completion later this month of a business incubator on the campus of South Dakota School of Mines & Technology.

The concept is to take the ongoing technology research and teaching that is a functional part of the School of Mines and marry it with business entrepreneurs with the hope that new technologies can be utilized in the private sector to develop and grow new businesses and relocate existing companies to the Black Hills. Black Hills Vision hopes that, eventually, towns throughout the Black Hills region will serve as home bases for small research firms.

Julie Smoragiewicz, vice president for university and public relations at the School of Mines, says the Black Hills Business Development Center is a place where start-up businesses can set up shop, open an office or a small manufacturing site. The Rapid City Economic Development Partnership, which helped fund the incubator, along with the state and National Science Foundation, plans to move into the center later this month. A formal dedication of the center is planned for July.

The School of Mines also has opened a Tech Development Lab on East St. Patrick Street. The lab is actually several laboratories for researchers, professors and students to conduct research in several areas, including composite materials and nanoscale technology - machines and processes too small to be seen except through a microscope. Tech is home to the Center for Accelerated Applications at the Nanoscale.

Mark Merchen, vice chair of Black Hills Vision, said the Tech Development Lab fits in with his group's plan for a technology corridor in the Black Hills. He points to several research labs at Tech that could help lead to high-tech companies locating or starting up in the Black Hills, including a polymer lab, direct write lab, friction stir lab and the CAAN (nanoscale).

In addition, N2TEC Institute (National Network for Technology, Entrepreneurship and Commercialization) has chosen the Black Hills for its Rural Pilot Project, where it proposes to "network innovators, entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial communities to develop new technology-based businesses and expand existing businesses in rural regions." N2TEC began as a National Science Foundation Partners-in-Innovation project with the University of Southern California. N2TEC has joined with Black Hills Vision and Gov. Mike Rounds' 2010 Initiative with the aim of launching at least one company in the Black Hills by the end of this year. Beginning May 22, the institute will be offering workshops and courses on entrepreneurship aimed at business leaders, researchers and students and faculty.

One company already is operating out of the Tech Development Lab - Nanoscale Semiconductor Testing, which is using a Zyvex nanomanipulator/probe station to test electronic circuitry on microchips.

Add to all this the likelihood that the National Science Foundation will choose a preferred site for the national underground science lab later this year - which might be Lead's Homestake Mine - and the future for bringing higher-paying, high-technology jobs to the Black Hills region is looking brighter.