Higher Education : Buzz

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On Facebook, Allan Karl has 642 friends, 128 likes and 405 photos. But you wouldn’t know this if you searched for him by his actual name: Allan Smith.

Smith, a sophomore at Ohio University, switched to using his first and middle name on Facebook to carve out more privacy and make himself harder to find, especially for employers.

As more people like Smith seek more privacy, two Ohio State students have created a new social media site that revolves around providing it.

Dustin Studer, a junior in biomedical engineering, and Suprasanna Mishra, a junior in neuroscience, launched Capstory.com on Oct. 1.

“We wanted to give complete control to the user so they can do whatever they want with their content and not have to worry,” Studer said.

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Ohio University students will compete for $20,000 in cash prizes with the mid-January kick off of the Scripps Innovation Challenge, one of the nation's most unique contests to come up with creative solutions to problems posed by media companies. Click here for more information.

Ohio State University has agreed to buy 50 megawatts of wind energy – equivalent to 26 percent of power consumption on the Columbus main campus – from the Blue Creek Wind Farm in northwest Ohio.

The agreement is one of the largest purchases of wind power by a North American entity that is not a utility, the school said.

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There is a growing disparity among cities that have a surfeit of college graduates, like Washington, and those, like Dayton, Ohio, that are trying to attract more grads, an analysis by the Brookings Institution indicated. College graduates are increasingly important economic drivers, particularly in cities that have largely lost their manufacturing sectors and the accessible jobs they provide.

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For the past five years, UT has been an active member of BioOhio, a nonprofit bioscience membership and development organization committed to connecting demand for biological products and services with Ohio entities that can fill those needs.

The UT Technology Transfer Office, BioOhio and other organizations play a critical role in connecting the University’s research initiatives to companies with the knowledge, experience and financial stability to bring the fruits of that research to the marketplace.

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To hear it from venture capitalist David Wilhelm, Athens is an emerging bell cow in Appalachia for entrepreneurship and technology investment.

Wilhelm, an Ohio University grad who served as chair of the Democratic National Committee in 1993-94, has managed campaigns for Bill Clinton, Paul Simon, Joe Biden and Richard M. Daley, and who now runs a venture capital firm, keynoted the BioVenture & Innovation Showcase at OU on Thursday.

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Last year, more than $710 million in federal funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) flowed into Ohio by way of its major research institutes including the Wexner Medical Center at Ohio State, Battelle, OhioHealth and the Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s. The state ranked 10th in the nation in NIH funding, which is a closely watched metric in academic, business and political circles.  Now civic, business and economic development leaders are focusing their attentions on how to translate these research dollars into jobs and revenue.  Click here to read the full article.

The Ohio State University and Ohio University are partnering to create a new commercialization and funding model. They have committed $35 million in total to the formation of a venture capital fund designed to meet early-stage funding needs of innovative technology ventures. Read the full story here.

A research team from the University of Akron is one of five national recipients of a $100,000 grant from General Electric, which last fall launched a program to identify and bring to market innovations created to diagnose and treat breast cancer. Read the article here.

In June, 50 recent college graduates from some of the best schools in the U.S. will join startups in struggling cities as part of Venture for America, a new program designed to help young companies, promote entrepreneurship and generate job growth. Read about it here.

Purdue University's Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship and the Discovery Learning Research Center are expanding their Interns for Entrepreneurship program to place more students in high-tech startup companies in Northeast Ohio. Read the story here.

The University of Toledo has earned recognition as one of the best schools for innovation transfer in fiscal year 2011. Read the story here.

The Princeton Review has named Bowling Green State University one of the country's best business schools. Check out the full story here.