Focus now on picking LI research-biz leader
Accelerate Long Island is the brainchild of Brookhaven Supervisor Mark Lesko. (May 28, 2009) Credit: NEWSDAY / Richard Slattery
The announcement earlier this week that Long Island business and political officials will start an organization to help commercialize research conducted here was not 24 hours old when the business community began speculating who would head the effort.
The organization, Accelerate Long Island, is the brainchild of Brookhaven Supervisor Mark Lesko and Long Island Association president Kevin Law, who began discussing the idea months ago with James Simons, founder and retired chief executive of Setauket-based hedge fund Renaissance Technologies.
Whoever is picked to head Accelerate Long Island will be tasked with finding ways to commercialize research that comes out of Stony Brook University, Hofstra University, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories, Brookhaven National Laboratory and North Shore-LIJ Health Systems.
According to several sources, early candidates include David Calone, chairman of the Suffolk Planning Commission and president of Jove Equity Partners Llc, a Babylon-based private equity firm; Russell Artz, a co-founder of Islandia-based software giant CA Technologies; Robert Catell, former chief executive of KeySpan and chairman of the Advanced Energy Research and Technology Center at Stony Brook University; Jim Morgo, Brookhaven's economic development coordinator and the Long Island Housing Partnership's first president and chief executive for nearly 17 years; and Simons.
Catell said he would not be interested but has agreed to serve on a board seeking a candidate. Morgo said he, too, would decline the position. Calone said he has agreed to serve on an Accelerate Long Island board but would not have time to run the organization. Artz and Simons could not be reached.
Law said any speculation is "premature" and the organization first has to be structured.
"What we're looking for is somebody who really understands the research activities going on in a place like this," Law said. The candidate would also have to be business savvy and a good fundraiser, he added.
Accelerate Long Island would be an outgrowth of the LIA, just as was the Long Island Housing Partnership. Several Island business executives said the partnership should serve as the model for Accelerate Long Island.
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