Gators' bravado, success enviable
By ROBERT TRIGAUX
Published August 29, 2005
David Day may hold the long-winded, fancy title of director of technology licensing at the University of Florida.
But it was UF's decline in the highest ranks of the nation's party schools, noted in last week's annual survey by the Princeton Review, that topped his opening remarks to an area group of medical device manufacturers.
"We're down to the 18th party school. I wish we were still in the top 10," lamented Day.
It was a joke, but only to a point. Ranking high on lists is in Day's blood. His job is to ease the process of converting promising Gator-based research into viable commercial products. Along the way, the academic researcher just might become rich. So may the university.
UF has received tens of millions of dollars over the years from lab creations that became mass-market hits, including Gatorade - now owned by Pepsico, and the Sentricon antitermite system marketed by Dow AgroSciences.
Speaking at a Holiday Inn breakfast group to members of the Florida Medical Manufacturers Consortium, Day made it perfectly clear that UF won't be overtaken any time soon by its Florida peers in the business of university-to-market technology transfer.
He called UF one of the nation's "battleships" in research among public universities. UF, by the way, was recently added as a third university (with the University of South Florida and University of Central Florida) to the Florida High Tech Corridor economic development group.
Maybe that's why Day, speaking Thursday so many miles from Gainesville and in the shadow of USF, paused to soften his pitch.
"I hope you don't view me here as competition with USF," Day said. UF may compete at things such as football and at the level of university presidents, he purred. But not tech transfer.
Right.
Later in his remarks, Day was more forthcoming about UF's intentions.
"We have a history of success," he said. "We have a history of ambition."
Frankly, that's the kind of bravado and track record we'd like to see at more Florida universities.
If there was one word Tampa's TECO Energy used to love sharing with reporters to describe the heart of the power company it was coal. Cheap and plentiful, burning coal helped power the generators at TECO-owned Tampa Electric's power plants in the 1990s to supply electricity to customers.
Then TECO got religion when environmental rules pushed the company to upgrade its power plants and, in some cases, switch to natural gas as the clean fuel of choice.
Well, guess what? The price of gas, like oil, has skyrocketed. And coal - a word spurned for years by TECO - is back.
This month, President Bush signed the first major piece of national energy legislation in more than a decade.
In an interview, TECO president John Ramil discussed the renewed interest in coal and the new energy measures that encourage more efficient and cleaner uses of coal.
Coal, Ramil said, has climbed in price. But oil and gas prices have soared much higher, leaving coal by comparison as the cheap fuel for the power industry.
Before the current surge in energy prices, natural gas was priced at about $2.50 per million BTUs, while coal hovered between $1.60 and $1.80.
Now coal is priced at about $2.50, while gas is up to $7.50.
"On a relative basis, coal continues to be very attractive," Ramil said. "Right now, you wish you could generate all your electricity with coal. But you can't switch from one energy source to another at a power plant."
Coal not only runs most of the company's power plants. TECO's coal business in Kentucky also sells plenty of its product to other power companies. Last year, 9-million tons were sold.
Not long ago, the coal company was TECO's fourth largest business. Now it is No. 2, behind Tampa Electric.
What do you get when you create a task force about Florida's future, then co-chair it with a tough environmentalist and the head of the most aggressive land developer in the state?
Sounds like mayhem in the making.
Somehow, 1000 Friends of Florida founder Nathaniel Reed and St. Joe Co. CEO Peter Rummell found common ground. At least enough for the Florida Initiative on Regional Cooperation, established by the Urban Land Institute, to issue a report last week that urges the state's diverse regions to get along and help one another. If they don't, the flood of new people will overwhelm the state or, at the least, make Florida less competitive.
The point is that regions, like the Tampa Bay area, are big enough to tackle big infrastructure matters that cities and towns can't handle.
Where will tomorrow's water come from? How will Florida's roads keep up with the coming leaps in additional traffic? How will high-priced metro areas provide affordable housing? How can the state get a grip on rampant sprawl?
These are often region-to-region issues, the report says. (And maybe state government's role, too?)
The report, "Building Florida's Future," warns that regional cooperation in Florida is less than perfect. And it suggests the anticipated pace of population and growth will get the better of us without improving ways for pieces of the state to work together.
Details can be found at www.uli.org/floridaregionalcooperation Robert Trigaux can be reached at 727 893-8405 or trigaux@sptimes.com