February 2, 2015
Where Science and Commerce Intersect: For 25 years GRA has been bringing high-tech, high-value jobs to the state
By Karen Kirkpatrick, Georgia Trend
As you look around Georgia today at the growing number of technology-related companies springing up, it’s easy to think that they landed here through some kind of cosmic coincidence. Nothing could be further from the truth.
It took the failure more than 30 years ago by the state to land a high-tech venture (it went to Austin instead), a hard look at the reasons behind the failure and the determination of a committed group of people that it wouldn’t happen again to get us to where we are today – an up-and-coming hotbed for biotech and technology-based businesses and home to the Georgia Research Alliance (GRA), the 25-year-old organization that’s helped make it happen.
The GRA’s mission is to expand research and commercialization capacity in Georgia’s universities in order to launch new companies, create high-value jobs and transform lives. GRA accomplishes its mission by recruiting eminent scholars – world-class scientists who work at Georgia universities; investing in cutting-edge research technology and equipment for the scholars’ university labs; supporting the commercialization of university-based discoveries and inventions; and strengthening alliances among Georgia universities, industry and government to make our state more competitive.
Since officially opening its doors in 1990, the GRA has helped leverage $600 million in state funding into $2.6 billion in direct federal and private investment, launch more than 150 companies, create more than 6,000 high-skill, high-value, high-quality jobs and build a portfolio of inventions, processes and technologies that benefit people far outside the borders of our state.
