High-tech capital sparse in Oklahoma

Oklahoma's high-tech industries continue to face limitations -- their share of venture capital funds is only 10 percent of the nationwide average per capita, said Tom Walker, executive vice president of i2E Inc.

But various entities are working to close the gap, Walker said Friday at a Tulsa Community College scientific symposium called "The Molecular Convergence: Innovative Technologies Update."

"We're pretty unique in that we have the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology, a state agency solely dedicated to science and technology," Walker said.

Speakers at the symposium presented a variety of commercial and educational scientific issues, with an emphasis on nanotechnology and microbiology.

Walker said i2E, a corporation dedicated to the creation of high-tech businesses in Oklahoma, has provided assistance to 344 start-up companies across the state in the last decade.

Of those, 183, or 53 percent, have survived -- well above the national average of a 44 percent survival rate for tech start-ups.

One of the start-ups helped was Benefit Informatics, a Tulsa-based medical benefits consulting firm, said Phil Kurtz, its president and CEO. Assistance from i2E helped the company survive its expensive formative years.

"The first two years of a new businesses' life is spent trying to figure out how to make payroll," Kurtz said.

To better reach out to fledgling companies, Walker said more investors and organizations need to work together.

"If we focus on collaborative initiatives, we're more likely to have a bigger impact," he said.

Gerard Clancy, president of the University of Oklahoma at Tulsa, said various state organizations and collegiate research programs are starting to get more funding.

"It's very encouraging, some of the things that are starting to happen in Oklahoma," he said.

Clancy noted that, nationwide, spending on research in biosciences is expected to grow at twice the rate of the economy."

Just one example of bioresearch being conducted at a microscopic level is at the OU. Chuanbin Mao, assistant professor of OU's department of chemistry and biochemistry, said his team is engineering viruses with medical applications, rather than the ability to cause disease.

Some possibilities for the engineered viruses include treatment of breast cancer, assembly of protein-based tracks and motors, and bone assembly.

"We want to be able to build a bone from scratch," Mao said.

Increasing numbers of commercial enterprises are also conducting nanoresearch to give themselves an edge. Bob Hogrefe, CEO of Access Optics in Broken Arrow, said his company is using nanotechnology to create better lenses for medical cameras.

Being able to create a more reliable, moisture-resistant covering for endoscopic probes in Broken Arrow has surprised representatives of high-tech companies from bigger states, he said.

"They're surprised we're doing good science in Broken Arrow, where obviously people live in mud huts," Hogrefe said.

Robert Evatt 581-8447
robert.evatt@tulsaworld.com