McAleer '87 Appointed Director of State-Level Utah Agency

This past September, Ted McAleer was selected and appointed as the first Executive Director of the USTAR Governing Authority out of Utah Governor Jon Huntsman's office.   The Utah Science, Technology and Research (USTAR) Economic Development Initiative is a bold new enterprise aimed at leveraging the proven success of Utah's research universities in creating and commercializing innovative technologies to create:

1.        More technology-based start-up firms in Utah
2.        More high-paying job opportunities in Utah
3.        More business activity in Utah with an associated expansion of the tax base

Senate Bill 75, passed in the March, 2006 legislative session, allocated funds for strategic investments at University of Utah and Utah State University.  The legislature approved $50,000,000 for the planning and design of a Bio Innovations Research Institute at Utah State and a Neuroscience and Biomedical Technology Research building at the University of Utah to house new innovation teams. It further approved $15,000,000 to be spent on the hiring of “all-star” research teams and $4,000,000 to provide funding for a technology outreach program.

Conservative projections developed by the Bureau of Economic and Business Reasearch indicate the USTAR initiative has the potential to create more than 400 news companies, 120,000 new jobs paying $62 billion in salaries, and $5 billion in new tax revenues during the next 30 years.  THE USTAR initiative is the top economic development priority for the state's business groups and association because they recongnize that the future is in science and technology.   The USTAR Economic Development initiative is Utah's future.