These are not the best of times on our state university campuses. Tuition is going up; budgets are being axed; and key faculty are being wooed like never before.
But USF was able to revel in a major coup with the official announcement that, indeed, the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, a non-profit spin-off of MIT, will be locating to the Tampa Bay Area and setting up shop at USF’s Tampa and St. Petersburg campuses. Draper, which will receive economic incentives totaling $30 million from the state, Hillsborough and Pinellas counties and USF’s Research Foundation, will build labs to manufacture miniature biomedical machines. Draper will employ 165 workers, at an average salary of $75,000, at the two locations.
USF President Judy Genshaft attributed the Draper score to two keys: last year’s recruitment of SRI (formerly Stanford Research Institute) to the USF St. Petersburg campus and the catalytic role of the Tampa Bay Partnership.
“The leadership of Draper was well aware of that (SRI) success,” said Genshaft. “The Partnership (in working with Gov. Charlie Crist and local governments) did exactly what it’s supposed to do and deserves tremendous credit for helping create the full funding package quickly and smoothly.”
Genshaft underscored Draper’s priority in exploring micro technologies for health and medicine.
“Let’s be precise,” explained Genshaft. “This initiative is exactly where discovery in health care is going. It harnesses all our ideas for the future – the discoveries of the genome system, new understanding of how medications work, the new delivery systems for medications and treatments personally designed for each patient.
“Instead of guessing about how well a drug will work, physicians will be able to tailor treatment plans for you personally,” she added.
Genshaft noted that such an approach is already the basis of the Moffitt Cancer Center’s “total cancer care” initiative and the outpatient treatment plans under way at the Carol and Frank Morsani Center for Advanced Healthcare on the Tampa campus.