With Californian Kamala Harris as vice president, it’s clear the new Biden administration is taking its cues from the once-Golden State on labor policy.

In one of its first acts in office, the Biden Administration placed a regulatory freeze on a Department of Labor regulation enacted in the waning days of the prior administration relating to independent contractors.  The rule, according to labor and employment law firm Fisher Phillips, “aims to make it easier for businesses to classify workers as independent contractors.”

Image: Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, speaks in July 219 at a rally in Sacramento for AB5. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File)

George Mason University President Gregory Washington on Monday announced he has formed an advisory roundtable of nearly 30 regional business executives and community leaders to focus on the university’s innovation initiative.

The President’s Innovation Advisory Council will focus on issues such as GMU’s efforts to increase the pipeline of tech workers. George Mason’s innovation initiative includes $235 million in General Assembly funding to produce approximately 30% of the 25,000 undergraduate and graduate majors as part of the state’s Tech Talent Investment Program.

Image: Concept rendering of George Mason University's Institute for Digital InnovAtion (IDIA) in Arlington

NASA has just released the first videos and images taken by the Perseverance rover as it landed—as well as the first sounds ever recorded from the surface of Mars.

What happened: On February 18, NASA’s Perseverance rover landed safely on Mars, the end of a journey that began last July. The spacecraft survived its “seven minutes of terror”—its entry through the Martian atmosphere and descent to the surface. On the way down, the rover’s cameras snapped images and recorded a wealth of video footage that has given us a historic view of the nail-biting moment it touched down.

Image: NASA / JPL

Oklahoma created two incentives over a decade ago to help address a skills gap that made it difficult for employers to fill aerospace engineering positions in the state. One incentive is a tax credit for aerospace employers based on compensation paid to qualified employees. The other is an income tax credit for qualified aerospace employees. A 2020 evaluation conducted by PFM Group Consulting* concluded that these programs perform well, with economic benefits exceeding costs. PFM and the Oklahoma Incentive Evaluation Commission recommended that the state retain the credits. 

From a serious write-up in the pages of the New York Times, to more lighthearted Buzzfeed quizzes and endless roundups of must-have products for “treating yourself,” you’ve likely noticed all of the column inches spent on the concept of self-care recently. The isolation, stress and burnout brought on by the pandemic put this practice front and center — especially now as the one-year mark approaches and most of us are scrapping the very bottom of our depleted reserves.

Deka BioSciences CEO, John Mumm, CEO of Deka BioSciences, virtually guests on BioTalk to discuss his history in the BioHealth Capital Region, Precision Medicine, and Funding Strategies.

Listen now via Apple http://apple.co/3aIy6Ew, Google http://bit.ly/3sfEysd, Spotify http://spoti.fi/3aJq8ei, and Tunein http://bit.ly/2Me25ut.

Image: http://www.biohealthinnovation.org

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Avoro Ventures announced today that Sara Nayeem, MD, has joined the firm as a Partner, focused on its venture capital investment efforts.

Dr. Nayeem joins Avoro Ventures after 12 years with New Enterprise Associates, Inc. (NEA), where she was a Partner in the firm’s biopharma investment practice serving on numerous company boards, in addition to providing support to fundraising, recruiting, and diversity and mentoring initiatives. She will source and manage private market investments within the biotechnology sector spanning early stage to late stage and cross-over, joining Behzad Aghazadeh, PhD, Managing Partner of Avoro Ventures and Avoro Capital Advisors, and Dr. Garheng Kong, Avoro Ventures Advisory Partner.

Image: Sara Nayeem - https://avorocapital.com/team_members/sara-nayeem/

We are writing to share the news that after 11 years of dedicated service and commitment to the University and the state, Judith Cone, vice chancellor for innovation, entrepreneurship and economic development, will retire from Carolina in April. Judith told us last year of her plans to retire from Carolina in spring 2021.

Image: Photo by Jon Gardiner/UNC-Chapel Hill

When tracking venture funding, a common lament is that Black and female founders raise a disproportionately tiny share of investment.

Out of $150 billion in U.S. venture investment last year, only $1 billion went to Black startup founders, which comes out to less than 1 percent of total funding, per Crunchbase data. Teams with at least one female founder, meanwhile, captured roughly 11 percent of venture funding.

In many respects, startups embody the American way. If you’re not building something bold with funding in short supply and a little uncertainty over its addressable market, you’re probably doing something wrong.

World-class talent and an unmatched support infrastructure have long been the bedrock of U.S. innovation. Even with limited IP, founders are able to attract investors and scale. But the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic has caused capital investment and traditional startup revenue streams to dry up.

The convergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, social and political unrest and worsening environmental challenges not only upended global markets in 2020, it also changed many business leaders’ perceptions about how various societal issues may affect their organizations. And it’s driven them to act.

It was an unusual confession from a CEO. “During my last staff meeting we must have spent 40% of the time talking about nothing,” Jorge said. “We were just hanging out, shooting the breeze, like the old days. It was one of the most enjoyable, productive calls we’ve had since we shut the office.” But afterwards, he went on to say, “a few people complained.”

Not long after the Supreme Court struck down school segregation with the Brown v. Board of Education decision, Mary Sue Coleman’s family moved from Georgia to Iowa.

Lawmakers in Georgia were considering eliminating public schools to avoid racial integration. That prompted Coleman’s father, who taught chemistry at Georgia Teachers College, which is now Georgia Southern University, to take a job at the Iowa State Teachers College, in Cedar Falls, which is now the University of Northern Iowa.

MADISON, Wis. – Leading up to the news of a proposed $100-million state investment in a venture capital fund, the Wisconsin Technology Council informally surveyed a small group of early-stage investors about the “demand” side of the equation.

Our informal query of eight such investors in Wisconsin revealed they could collectively invest between $92 million and $116 million per year in their existing Wisconsin-only portfolios – not counting new companies they have yet to see or consider as investment targets.

The party roared on for many of you during the pandemic.

Image: https://fortune.com - From Video

UK tech is set to continue to attract capital from the VC industry in 2021 – from fintech, both B2C and B2B over impact tech to health and biotech we expect to see strong interest.

Despite the obvious challenges of Covid-19 the UK tech sector once again proved highly attractive for the venture capital industry throughout 2020. There was still appetite for large deals in the UK, across all stages, demonstrating that good companies will always be able to raise capital, especially those positioned to prosper during and beyond the pandemic. In our underlying portfolio, companies such as Cazoo, Hopin and Graphcore were all able to raise rounds well north of £100m.

The rise of “Zoom University” was only possible because edtech wasn’t ready to address the biggest opportunity of the past year: remote learning at scale. Of course, the term encapsulates more than just Zoom, it’s a nod to how schools had to rapidly adopt enterprise video conferencing software to keep school in session in the wake of closures brought on by the virus’ rapid spread.

Image: Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / Bryce Durbin

Over the past decade, venture capital has undergone a remarkable transformation. What started as a boutique industry dominated by former founders has blossomed into an institutional asset class brimming with aspiring professionals. Consequently, venture investing is no longer just a craft, but a career. For those just starting out, generating good returns can feel like an art, but building a platform that extends beyond a single fund is more of a science. In search of the formula for building a long-lasting, industry-leading venture capital fund, I sat down with Winter Mead, a former institutional LP and co-founder of venture fund accelerator Oper8r.

Research by an international team of investigators has demonstrated the ability of trained dogs to detect aggressive prostate cancer from urine samples, and suggests that an artificial neural network could learn from this olfactory capability. The scientists say findings from the study, which is reported in PLOS One, could feasibly be used to help direct the development of novel, machine-based tools for detecting prostate cancer, which integrate canine olfaction with the analysis of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in urine, microbial profiling, and artificial neural network (ANN)-assisted examination. Study lead Claire Guest, from Medical Detection Dogs, in the U.K., and colleagues in the U.K. and U.S., claimed, “We’ve shown it is possible to replicate the dog’s performance as sensors and brains, it is now time to put this technology in every smartphone.”

Image: Fox red Labrador, Florin (MDD/Neil Pollock)

When a smattering of doctoral programs announced last spring that they wouldn’t admit an incoming class in fall 2021, the idea felt drastic. To some, it felt desperate.

But as the summer and fall wore on, more departments announced that they, too, would close their application portals. Nor were the pauses limited to small programs at less wealthy institutions; doctoral programs at seven of eight Ivy League schools and a coterie of other high-profile institutions decided to forgo new cohorts. A list of admissions suspensions maintained by The Chronicle since September now includes 131 programs. Still more programs admitted smaller cohorts than normal.