Goodbye Austin, Hello Albany

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The Business Review reports that International Sematech will be moving their headquarters and more than 100 jobs to Albany in January.

International Sematech’s headquarters and all operations will move in January 2011 to the the University at Albany’s College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering.

Gov. David Paterson said International Sematech was “picking up [its] stakes and moving its operations in Texas” and relocating to New York.

International Sematech and private partners will invest a combined $80 million, officials said. In addition, $20 million in state money will be contributed through the state Assembly and Empire State Development Corp.

International Sematech used to be based in Austin, Texas. The consortium has had a presence on the Albany NanoTech campus since 2003.

Read more: Int’l Sematech moving operations, 100 jobs to Albany – The Business Review (Albany)

13th!

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The Albany-Schenectady metro ranks 13th on the Daily Beast’s list of the Brainiest Cities:

Where do the biggest brainiacs in America live? Richard Florida crunches the numbers to figure out the smartest cities in the country.

Boulder, Colorado, tops the list of America’s brainiest metros. Boulder is home to the University of Colorado and was recently named by BusinessWeek as the nation’s best place for startup companies.

America’s Brainiest Metros are a mix of large metros with a significant presence of technology and knowledge-based businesses and the nation’s premiere college and university towns. Not surprisingly, the presence of a major research university appears to be one of the most decisive variables. Durham or Durham-Chapel Hill, North Carolina, home to Duke University and the University of North Carolina takes second place, with neighboring Raleigh-Cary (home to North Carolina State) in 11th. Both are part of the famed North Carolina Research Triangle. Greater Washington DC comes in third, followed by Greater Boston (Harvard, MIT, Boston University), and the Trenton-Ewing metro in Central New Jersey, which includes Princeton University.

The remainder of the top 20 includes large tech metros like San Jose (Stanford), San Francisco, Austin (University of Texas) and Seattle (University of Washington) along with Olympia (the state capital, which is part of Greater Seattle’s expanded metro area), as well as college towns like Ithaca, New York, home to Cornell University (which also topped our earlier list of best places for college grads), Charlottesville (University of Virginia), Madison (University of Wisconsin), Corvallis (Oregon State University), Fort Collins (home to Colorado State University,) and Ames (Iowa State University) and Iowa City (the University of Iowa). The list also includes the Frost Belt metros of Albany-Schenectady (home to General Electric and SUNY Albany), and Rochester, Minnesota, (home to the Mayo Clinic and IBM’s largest global facility and which topped our previous list of biggest projected job gainers) also make the list.

The Brainiest Metros Index is based on three variables: (1) the share of adults 25 years of age and older with a Ph.D., master’s or professional degree (from the U.S. Census American Community Survey), (2) computer scientists and mathematicians as a share of all employment, and (3) scientists (physical, biological, social) as a share of total metro employment (both from Bureau of Labor Statistics). The index weights all three variables equally and covers 362 U.S. metro regions.

Read more at: America’s Brainiest Cities – The Daily Beast.

How Green is the Capital Region?

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Chris Churchill’s post on the TimesUnion.com Places and Spaces reports on a survey conducted by The Business Courier of Cincinnati:

…the Capital Region scored first in the nation in study’s “green jobs per capita” ranking, and ranked 10th in average travel time. We ranked 18th in public transit usage, 39th for urban sprawl, and 35th for LEED-certified projects.

1. Portland, Ore.

2. San Francisco

3. Honolulu

4. Austin, Texas

5. Boston, Mass.

6. Seattle

7. Denver

8. Pittsburgh

9. Albuquerque

10. Albany-Schenectady-Troy

Read the post here: Is the Capital Region among the greenest of the green? – Places & Spaces – timesunion.com – Albany NY.