Accelerate LI appoints LIA VP Sikes as chair

Accelerate Long Island, a partnership aimed at creating jobs by converting research into commercial products, has named Long Island Association official Stacey Sikes as its chair.

Sikes, who will remain vice president of government affairs and communications at the LIA, took the reins from Accelerate Long Island's acting chair, David Calone.

Sikes' appointment to the unpaid position coincides with a strategic shift at Accelerate Long Island, which has focused on funding startup companies from the time of its founding in 2014.

The new mission of Accelerate Long Island will be to "knit resources together to grow our innovation economy," Sikes said.

That will include developing startup events, networking opportunities and connections to investors and the technology transfer offices of research institutions, she said.

"Stacey is a multitalented and seasoned business leader with experience in incubating new companies and creating high-tech jobs," said Matt Cohen, president and chief executive of the LIA.

The not-for-profit was created to identify and promote homegrown research and help build companies that could spark the Long Island economy.

Accelerate Long Island's financial supporters include Stony Brook University, Northwell Health, Hofstra University, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Calone said the change in strategy coincides with a new policy by Empire State Development, a state business-development agency, to shift away from the role of providing venture capital to startup companies.

Melville-based Accelerate Long Island was established when ESD provided $500,000 in grants that were matched by $500,000 from venture capital funds to 10 companies. Seven of the original companies continue in operation, Calone said.

A later fund, Accelerate New York Seed Portfolio, includes 24 companies based in New York City, the Hudson Valley and Long Island.

Both funds remain active.

Calone said portfolio companies in the two funds have attracted more than $70 million in private venture capital funding.

Companies backed by Accelerate Long Island include Manhattan-based Envisagenics, a company spun out of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory that uses artificial intelligence for drug discovery, and Farmingdale-based Codagenics Inc., a synthetic biology company that is developing vaccine candidates based on research from Stony Brook University.

Sikes succeeds former Accelerate Long Island chair Kevin Law, who stepped down after being nominated to chair Empire State Development by Gov. Kathy Hochul in October.

Law is a former president and chief executive of the Long Island Association.

By Ken Schachter

kenneth.schachter@newsday.comkschach

Ken Schachter covers corporate news, including technology and aerospace, and other business topics for Newsday. He has also worked at The Miami Herald and The Jerusalem Post.