WRAL Tech Wire

 Chapel Hill joins startup push with own incubator

The hometown for the University of North Carolina is launching a startup hub, joining Durham, Morrisville, Raleigh, Cary and Charlotte in efforts to help nurture new businesses.

Launch Chapel Hill

 UNC scientist turns NC Biotech support into cutting-edge gene therapies

Clinical studies on a lifesaving gene therapy are looking good for Jude Samulski, Ph.D., who was recruited to the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in 1993 with nearly $250,000 in grant funding from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center.

Jude Samulski

 NC's Smithies, Thorp, Atala earn National Academy of Inventors honors

Nobel Prize winning scientist Oliver Smithies and UNC-CH Chancellor Holden Thorp along with Wake Forest University's Anthony Atala will soon become "charter fellows" in the National Academy of Inventors.

 UNC Launch Pad startup STENCIL tackles high school dropout rate

STENCIL, or Students and Teachers Employing New Criteria in Learning, offers a cloud-based tool kit to help school officials predict if a student is a drop-out risk.

Julian Wooten targets education with startup

 New CFO brings extensive ecommerce experience to startup BuyStand

CED's "Start Something" Blog: Charlie Farrell, a long-time financial executive at automotive news website Edmunds.com, is the new CFO at BuyStand.com. He likes what he sees at the Durham-based startup.

 Veteran VC Jeff Clark 'touched and honored' by SEBIO award

CED's "Start Something" Blog: Triangle life-science companies won four of the five major awards at SEBIO. Jason Parker talked with Jeff Clark of Aurora Funds, who won the top individual honor.

Jeff Clark of The Aurora Funds, left, with fellow VC Jason Caplain

 UNC, Duke, Wake Forest to offer undergraduate courses online

UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke and Wake Forest are teaming up with several other universities to offer online undergraduate courses for credit and that can be taken at a member university where a student isn't enrolled.

UNC, Duke, Wake Forest join Semester Online

 VC to entrepreneurs: Go-to-market goal is to 'be lazy' in targeting

CED's "Start Something" Blog: If launching a new product, said Maxwell, the key is to find and identify a particularly well defined narrow universe of buyers. In other words, "why sell to multiple segments when you can sell to a real narrow market successfully," says venture capitalist Scott Maxwell.

Hold on to your dollars

 Tech accelerator Groundwork Labs, universities to offer 'camp'

"Underground Summer is a bridge from the excellent programs that the Universities have established," said John Austin, Director of Groundwork Labs, "This experience will enable the students to experience the broader entrepreneurial community in the Triangle."

Groundwork Labs

 Skin in the game: For startups, investing, sacrifice, taking risks are essential

At the Startup Summit, four founders and CEOs of emerging companies share their secrets to building potentially successful ventures - from investing their own money to being brave enough to take risks.

Taking risks

 UNC-Chapel Hill to host Global Entrepreneurship Week

UNC-Chapel Hill is set to host its first-ever Global Entrepreneurship Week in conjunction with Triangle Entrepreneurship Week, occurring Nov. 12-18, 2012.

Global Entrepreneurship Week

 UNC-CH lands $1.5M grant for 'big data' project

Arcot Rajasekar, chief scientist at the Renaissance Computing Institute, is principal investigator for a three-year project, "DataBridge - A Sociometric System for Long-Tail Science Data Collections."

 Chapel Hill startup Gift Boogle acquires tech partner MatchServ

Gift Boogle, which is positioning itself as "the Match.com for gift giving," is gearing up to launch this month and will be a presenter at the CED Tech Venture conference this week.

 Hard times: Moving beyond Plato vs. plumbing in NC for jobs

A new whitepaper, "Moving Beyond Plato Versus Plumbing: Toward Individualized Education and Career Passways for All North Carolinians," explores the value of education in preparing for future jobs.

N.C. jobs picture from 2007 recession to June 2012

 NSF increases funding to $35M for RTP math and sciences institute

The Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute has won a competitive five-year grant from the National Science Foundation for continued work in math and statistics research and education.

SAMSI

 UNC alum creates software startup to save education

A recent UNC graduate has launched an educational software startup to provide a cloud-based solution to what has been called the biggest crisis in American education.

 UNC is technical lead of $4.1M water research project

The Renaissance Computing Institute will work with seven other universities in the "Facebook for hydrologists" project that is funded by the National Science Foundation.

 Triangle Global Health Consortium names interim director

Lisa Strader, a board member who also works at RTI International, replaces Matt Epstein, who resigned in May.

 AIDS cure may be possible, UNC researchers report

A Merck drug for a rare type of cancer flushed out hidden deposits of HIV in a study, according to researchers who say the results provide a hint that curing AIDS may someday be possible.

 Chapel Hill medtech firm Morphormics is sold for $5.7M

Morphormics, which specializes in medical image enhancement, is acquired by California-based Accuray.

New Cancer Technology