lmost everyone who grew up in New Jersey has been asked, "Really, what exit?" at one time or another. The jab attempts to reduce the state to the New Jersey Turnpike, a stretch of I-95 linking the New York metro area west of the Hudson River to the Delaware River at Wilmington, Del.
      Jokes aside, that turnpike and the almost-parallel Rte. 1 between Trenton and New Brunswick in central New Jersey have been the veins bringing capital investment and jobs to the heart of the state's pharmaceutical industry and the arteries sending innovation from it to users worldwide.
      More recently, the biotech industry has clustered in much the same region, creating a broader life-sciences cluster with few peers globally. Even relatively high personal and property taxes and a sometimes-intemperate business climate haven't discouraged biotech companies from settling in central New Jersey. When BioNJ, the state's association of biotech companies, was formed in 1994, it had 30 members. Today, it has more than 235.       "When we talk to companies about locating in New Jersey, they are concerned about the high cost of doing business here," says Judith Sheft, associate vice president, technology development, at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), in Newark. "They tell us that state incentives are not as attractive as other states' programs.
      "But we are able to show them the vibrant climate that is New Jersey and highlight a flexible academic-industry interface," she points out. "As an example, NJIT's Office of Technology Development is willing to work with companies in a variety of mechanisms to help them advance their technologies and insure that the companies' proprietary advantage is protected and enhanced. We are not the stereotypical ivory-tower academic institution. We are willing to work at the boundary of industry and academia."
      That is precisely where higher education institutions need to be if they are to help their region compete in the global life-sciences marketplace. Companies need to be where they need to be, and research institutions in New Jersey are helping narrow the location-possibility list by serving the industry sectors most critical to central New Jersey.       Finegold is spearheading an effort to develop what he calls a "statewide degree framework for professional science masters degrees." He explains: "These are where students at the Masters level will be learning an area of further applied science as well as the core business, finance and managerial skills needed to build or work in a commercial organization. The idea is to have people who can do things in such areas as project management and business development, regulatory, clinical, bioscience-specific intellectual property, and preparing them so they can take what is still a technology in its relative infancy and help to commercialize that."
      By infancy, Finegold is referring to how recently the genome was decoded and the universe of potential product development to take place over the next century – not only in health-related fields, but also in environmental science, clean energy, food applications and the myriad other applications of biotechnology.
      "This is an unprecedented partnership," says Finegold. "We have 15 units across all three Rutgers campuses that are all working on this effort." Degrees will be offered to full-time students and on a part-time basis for those already working in the industry.
      "This program will allow us to grow a work force that is on the cutting edge in this area," he says. "It's a big effort, but we're very excited about it, and it already has attracted some significant interest. The Sloan Foundation in New York, the main funder of these types of programs nationally, has recently given us a $300,000 grant to help launch these new degrees, and we've applied for a larger grant from the Department of Education which is specifically targeted at professional science Masters, the types of degree cited in the America Competes Act as something we need more of in the U.S. New Jersey would be one of the first states to attempt to build a statewide system to do that. It could be a real differentiator for us."
      Finegold says that rather than a produce a Masters thesis, students will take a real technology from a lab at Rutgers or the Cancer Institute of New Jersey or similar institution and develop a business plan and market analysis around it – and then present the business plan to a group of investors.
      "This will help feed the pipeline of new firms and new jobs in New Jersey," he asserts.       Just as important to central New Jersey's continued ability to lure life sciences companies is a $5-million Dept. of Labor WIRED (Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development) grant awarded in June 2007 to the central New Jersey region of Hunterdon, Mercer, Middlesex, Monmouth and Somerset counties. Dubbed Bio-1 in honor of the biotech backbone of Rte. 1, the new WIRED grant is New Jersey's third. The Delaware Valley Tri-State Area, which includes southern New Jersey, and Northern New Jersey were among the second group of regions to receive WIRED grants in January 2007. There are now 39 WIRED grant recipients in the U.S.
      "The central part of the state wasn't really covered, where a lot of the bioscience industry is centered," notes Rutgers' Dean Finegold, who was instrumental in applying for the grant. Bio-1 funds are addressing several needs, the common denominator being the strengthening of the bridge between education and the bioscience industry.
      "With the Bio-1 initiatives well established, we will be strengthening our already highly skilled, highly educated work force, addressing the skill-gaps/needs that the biotech and pharmaceutical companies have outlined for us," says Mary Ellen Clark, Bio-1's executive director, who, as a former Johnson & Johnson executive, has a keen understanding of the industry's work-force requirements. "We will have scientists who are more skilled in business competencies, and we will have specialists in HR, IT and finance, who understand the FDA regulatory environment, the drug discovery development process and the science behind it," she explains.
      Keeping the work force competitive sometimes means managing an oversupply of workers.
      "We have a number of highly educated workers who have been displaced from various industries due to changes in the economy," Clark notes. "They do not want to leave New Jersey and are capable and willing to be re-tooled for different kinds of jobs – a lot of people with advanced computing skills, logistical skills, and so forth."
      What's more, she says, "the Baby Boomers are not retired – they are reinventing themselves as entrepreneurs, teachers and knowledge workers in new areas. We will have greater numbers and a greater diversity of students going into the sciences as a major and greater competency in math and science from our schools based on new and higher standards being put in place by the Department of Education. So our pipeline of new talent will be increasing."