U.S. Delegation "Life Sciences Exchange Project" Conference Center of Magnetic Resonance (CERM) - Università degli Studi di Firenze, May 12, 2006
Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse Doros Platika, PhD The Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse is a public/private partnership, founded by the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University, UPMC Health System, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and its regional foundation community. Together with private industry and advanced research and healthcare capabilities of our institutional partners, PLSG invests in and supports the growth of regional life sciences companies in the areas of: bioinformatics; bionanotechnology; diagnostics; medical devices; medical robotics; therapeutics; and tools and services. The Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse began as a bold initiative between two of Pittsburghs major research universities Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. This initiative, named BioVenture, was envisioned as an effort to position the region as a leading national and international center for Life Science research. During the early stages of the BioVenture Initiative, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (under then-Governor Tom Ridge) announced plans to leverage the states $100 million in tobacco settlement funds to create three Life Sciences Greenhouses throughout Pennsylvania. These Greenhouses would be modeled after Pittsburgh's Digital Greenhouse providing a powerful and proven economic development model for growing emerging industries. Leaders in the BioVenture project determined that the best course of action would be to merge the project with the state initiative, thereby forming the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse to leverage both the university collaboration between Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh as well as the Commonwealths high-profile economic development initiative.
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