Fueled with $30 million from Florida's innovation incentive program, an MIT spin-off--Draper Laboratory--is ramping up plans to recruit about 165 R&D staffers at the University of South Florida in Tampa and St. Petersburg. Recruits, most with a master's or PhD, will be put to work developing bioMEMS, tiny machines no larger than the width of a human hair that can be dispatched in the body to scout for chemical changes or act as drug delivery vessels.
One of the projects they will be working on will be a microeletronic machine that can be implanted behind the eye which can periodically dispense therapeutics for macular degeneration. Another project will focus on detecting changes in blood sugar levels. St. Petersburg is providing land for a manufacturing facility.
- read the report in the St. Petersburg Times