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As of Friday, the Division of Economic and Community Outreach changed its name to the Division of Innovation and Applied Research.

The department “serves as a point of entry for businesses, non-profit organizations, government agencies, and community members interested in collaborating with the University,” according to Towson’s website.

The name change is a small part of the work that Dyan Brasington, the vice president for Division of Innovation and Applied Research, is doing under President Maravene Loeschke.

The Johns Hopkins University performed $2.1 billion in medical, science, and engineering research in fiscal 2011, making it the leading U.S. academic institution in total research and development spending for the 33rd year in a row, according to a new National Science Foundation ranking.

The university also once again ranked first on the NSF’s separate list for federally funded research and development, spending $1.88 billion in FY2011 on research supported by NSF, NASA, the National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Defense. In FY2002, Johns Hopkins became the first university to reach the $1 billion mark on either list, recording $1.14 billion in total research and $1.023 billion in federally sponsored research that year.

QIAGEN N.V. has announced the first product launches in its initiative to advance routine workflows in next-generation sequencing (NGS) applications. At the annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) in San Francisco, QIAGEN will present four new products that improve critical sample preparation processes in the pre-analytical phase of next-generation sequencing. At ASHG, QIAGEN also will provide an outlook on additional pre-analytical products under development for advanced NGS workflow solutions, which are planned for launch in early 2013.

The QIAGEN pre-analytical products are “universal,” compatible with any NGS platform in the market and functional in a wide range of NGS applications. They represent the first launches in the QIAGEN initiative unveiled earlier this year, which aims to integrate sample preparation products and novel assay technologies into complete workflows for next-generation sequencing.

After more than two weeks crisscrossing the state with stops in Ocean City, La Plata, Hagerstown and pretty much everywhere in between, the bright yellow Pitch Across Maryland bus rolled into Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia on Friday.

There was music, booze, advice for entrepreneurs and, of course, more business pitches in the make-shift studio in the back of the bus.

Organizers expected to collect 40 or so pitches total at the 25 stops across the state when the bus pulled out of Columbia on Sept. 11 to start the tour.

Fyodor Biotechnologies, a Baltimore-based diagnostic and biopharmaceutical company, announced today that the National Science Foundation has awarded the company a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I grant. With the $150,000 funding, Fyodor plans to develop a novel recombinant antibody to be used in a urine-based test for the point-of-need detection of Leptospirosis.

Leptospirosis is a worldwide, potentially serious but treatable bacterial disease that occurs in humans and domestic animals, including pets. The causative bacteria are spread through the urine of infected animals, which can get into water (including swimming pools) or soil, and can survive there for weeks to months. Clinical signs of leptospirosis are nonspecific, and current diagnostic tools rely on complicated testing methods that are unsuitable for use in many point- of-need settings. Therefore, a simple one-step test is urgently needed for rapid diagnosis.

The deadline for contract proposal submissions is Tuesday, November 13th, 2012

Details and solicitation materials are available at the NIH SBIR Website in the Funding Opportunity Table: http://sbir.nih.gov/.

Applications must respond to a topic in the solicitation. All submissions must be on paper. Contract proposal forms are available electronically at PHS 2013-1 PDF [http://grants.nih.gov/grants/funding/SBIRContract/PHS2013-1.pdf] or MS Word [http://grants.nih.gov/grants/funding/SBIRContract/PHS2013-1.doc]. Please follow the direc­tions in the solicitation very carefully.

Bethesda-based Telcare Inc. has secured more than $25 million in equity funding.

Telcare, the developer of the first FDA-cleared wireless glucose monitoring system for people with diabetes, will use the funds for marketing, sales, research and development and ongoing operations.

Sequoia Capital led the round, which includes backing from existing investor, Qualcomm Inc., acting through itsQualcomm Life Fund.

Voting is currently open for the South by Southwest (SXSW) PanelPicker!  SXSW has evolved to become one of the largest interactive media, technology and innovation conferences in the country.  While panels span topics from ‘Art and Inspiration’ to ‘Science and Space Exploration’, the ‘Government or Citizen Engagement’ track has been receiving a lot of attention in recent years.  Of the 3,123 proposals this year, 82 have been tagged as “Government or Citizen Engagement.”     

Show your support for by voting for Entrepreneurs-in-Residence: Not Just for VCs!  Venture capital firms have utilized the services of ‘Entrepreneurs-in-Residence’ (EIRs), seasoned innovators with functional expertise to help spur entrepreneurship and fill gaps in expertise. Now, imagine combining the “innovation mojo” of EIRs with some of the government’s brightest intrapreneurs to solve the nation’s most pressing challenges.

If you thought buying stock in mobile health (mHealth) companies was a good idea, it is. But if you decided to invest in the overall digital health sector – which includes mHealth, B2B apps and consumer services such as ZocDoc – you’d be brilliant. And, probably very rich.

Private financing by venture capitalists more than tripled in the first half of 2012, according to a study by financial services company Burrill & Company, as reported by Richard MacManus at ReadWriteWeb. This follows a June report from nonprofit foundation Rock Health that showed “skyrocketing” VC funding in the healthcare sector.