In today’s Bulldog wrapup of technology and life science news:

  • Red Hat gets a boost from two analyst firms ahead of Thursday’s earnings
  • GSK is opening a new $95 million institute
  • Twitter’s soon-to-be-former CEO is upbeat
  • TransEnterix plans to bolster sales force
  • Bloomberg Philanthropies to spend $100 million on new Cornell Campus

The details:

  • Boosts for Red Hat from analysts

Just ahead of Red Hat’s earnings announcement on Thursday, two Wall Street analysts have boosted their expectations for RHT shares.

Piper Jaffray analyst Katherine Egbert, who once covered Red Hat for Jefferies, raised her share target price to $89 from $81.

“We expect a very good Q1 report from Red Hat on Thursday but worry that, like with other high multiple cloud vendors, anything but a large amount of revenue and billings upside could disappoint. Yr/yr billings growth in the Q4-Q1 period has been down in 9 of the last 10 years. Q1 has the easiest billings comp in FY16,” she wrote in a research note.

Meanwhile, Raymond James raised its target price for Red Hat to $84 from $79.

  • GSK opening genomics lab

Drug giant GSK (NYSE: GSK) has picked Seattle for the location of a new genomics lab that will focus on research into how cells operate.

GSK is investing $95 million, according to Reuters.

“The non-profit Altius Institute for Biomedical Sciences in Seattle will be led by John Stamatoyannopoulos, of the University of Washington School of Medicine, with GSK providing more than $95 million in cash and other resources,” Reuters reports.

GSK will have rights to inventions and discoveries.

Read more at:

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/06/17/uk-gsk-research-cells-idUKKBN0OX05020150617

  • Twitter’s lame-duck CEO ‘over the moon’ about changes ahead

Twitter’s lame-duck CEO Dick Costolo says he is leaving the company stocked with new features that will boost revenue and help make the short-messaging service useful to more people.

“We have things rolling out this fall that I am over the moon about and can’t wait for people to see,” Costolo said Tuesday during an appearance at a Bloomberg technology conference.

Twitter will have a different leader by the time those products appear because Costolo is ending his nearly five-year reign as CEO on July 1 as part of a shake-up announced last week. Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey is stepping in as interim CEO while the San Francisco company’s board searches for a permanent replacement.

Without providing further details, Costolo said the upcoming features will create engaging experiences that appeal to broad audiences. He also indicated the new features will generate more advertising.

  • TransEnterix plans to hire

With $50 million raised through a share offering, RTP-based TransEnterix is gearing up to hire additional staff.

But the company also is still waiting for approval from the FDA for its robotic surgical system.

The Triangle Business Journal reports that management has plans for hiring sales people should the FDA approve the system.

Read details at:

http://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/news/2015/06/15/transenterix-rtp-nc-trxc-raises-money-surgibot.html

  • Bloomberg Philanthropies gives $100M to Cornell NYC campus

Bloomberg Philanthropies is donating $100 million to a Cornell University graduate school for a new high-tech New York City campus.

Ground was broken Tuesday for Cornell Tech on Roosevelt Island. The first academic building will be called the Bloomberg Center.

Cornell won a competition to build the campus during the administration of former Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

The school aims to help bring academic research to market and foster the city’s technology industry.

When fully completed, the campus will span 12 acres.

Cornell Tech has been running since 2013 in temporary space donated by Google in Manhattan.