Happy New Year! I hope you all had lots of great time with friends and family over the holidays. With 2024 now firmly in the rearview mirror, we are excited to look ahead at 2025. We definitely have an ambitious agenda ahead!
First, I would like to formally welcome new Board member, Elizabeth Love. David Daigler, President of the Maine Community College System (MCCS), recently appointed Liz to serve as his designee on the MTI Board of Directors, replacing Dan Belyea. Liz is the Director of Sector Partnerships with the Harold Alfond Center for the Advancement of Maine’s Workforce at MCCS and previously worked in the Governor’s Energy Office. We are pleased to have her join the team.
In other exciting news, you are no doubt aware that the $25 million R&D bond earned voter support last November. The Maine Technology Institute (MTI) will be administering the bond. We have not yet started developing the program guidelines but they will likely resemble past bond funded programs.
After developing a draft, we will conduct listening sessions across Maine so we can ensure that we are incorporating feedback from the business community and our partners in Maine’s innovation ecosystem. We hope to have the program fully baked by springtime so we can begin soliciting proposals. The application period will likely be a couple months in duration and, following our review and evaluation process, we should be able to make awards by late summer. (The state typically sells its bonds on the bond market in the summer so the R&D funds will not actually be available until then). So, stay tuned.
In other news, the State of Maine has directed some additional funding to MTI to conduct two final Maine Jobs and Recovery Plan programs. The first is a $2 million fund to support the attraction and/or development of a life sciences incubator. The second is an additional and final phase of the Forestry Recovery Initiative. The timeline for launching the programs is flexible but will likely occur before the end of 2025.
Lastly, we are excited to announce another in-person networking event scheduled for this May. Building off our fun and successful 25th anniversary, we will be hosting an “MTI Mixer” in collaboration with Startup Maine week, on Wednesday, May 21, 2025, in the evening. More details to follow, but we are excited for another opportunity to showcase MTI’s amazing portfolio companies.
Again, my best wishes to you and yours for a healthy and prosperous 2025.
BW