Deb Crawford, Drexel Vice Provost for Research on evaluating cells a thousand times smaller than a human hair and more: Q&A

Debbie Crawford isn’t from around here.

The native of Glasgow, Scotland moved from Alexandria, VA to take the Vice Provost for Research gig at Drexel University in September and is awash in a continued University City renaissance that most Philadelphians from even five years ago wouldn’t recognize.

The engineer-by-training spent 20 years at the venerable National Science Foundation and is here to push forward Drexel’s reputation as a serious research institution.

“The tipping point for that is going from the individual cottage industry notion of research with deep expertise to a place where we are bringing the researcher across a variety of other fields to create a sum greater than the parts that can attack bigger challenges,” Crawford tells Technically Philly , her accent aglow. “So it’s taking new technologies and bringing together the creative arts and engineering or whoever else and pull them in that sandbox to have the largest impact possible.”

Now living in Center City, Crawford says she brings from NSF “an understanding of the topic barriers in these large projects.”

Below, Crawford talks about why Drexel was the right choice, the coolest research happening at the university right now and more.

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Links: State budget cuts mean less for startups, Penn president gets national bioethics nod and More

DEFINITE READS

• The Pittsburgh Business Journal reports that the Pennsylvania budget cuts mean less money for startups. H/T Philly Tech News
• The Green Skeptic and the Inquirer’s Mike Armstrong give their takes on Founders Factory from Philly Startup Leaders. See our review here.
• Dude from Philly Eco City wants to try a DIY car share and wants help.
• NJBIZ reports on a Camden startup focusing on cyber threats like flash mobs. H/T PTN

After the jump, CoTweet gets big name clients, Viddler video of Jay Adelson and Kevin Rose and more.

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Shop Talk: PA responsible for three percent of all VC-created jobs, 6th in nation

When it comes to ranking private equity markets by the number of deals completed, Philadelphia typically ranks in the upper-half of the middle of the pack. So when the National Venture Capital Association released a report yesterday categorizing markets by state instead of by region, where did Pennsylvania land?

Around 6th place.

Despite Philadelphia ranking ninth in deals made and twelfth in total-invested in Q3, Pennsylvania ranks sixth in the nation when it comes to the percentage of jobs created through private equity investment.

The numbers were released Tuesday by the National Venture Capital Association as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week. The NVCA has been releasing a VC report every day, including the results of interviews with 500 CEOs and VCs.

So as we do every so often, allow us to peel apart the boring spreadsheets to surmise what this means for our fair city.

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Friday Q&A: Sherrill Neff, founding partner of Quaker BioVentures

Sherrill Neff

Thanks to the city’s glut of local universities and pharmaceutical companies, Philadelphia is a wonderful environment for a biotech startup to begin and to exit.

However, with the lack of an IPO market and current economic conditions, statups often need hundreds of millions of dollars to see their idea from research product to sale to big pharma.

And that’s where Quaker BioVentures steps in.

Founded in 2003 by Ira Lubert, Brenda Gavin and Sherrill Neff, Quaker takes pride in keeping all of its investments local — and for good reason. Philadelphia benefits from being in the center of the perfect storm of plentiful university research combined with a large number of pharmaceutical companies having major local operations.

“It’s important we get to know the [big pharmaceutical companies] really well, that they are our friends socially and professionally,” says Neff. “It’s easier here than if we were sitting on the West coast trying to have that interaction.”

After raising $280 million in 2003 and an additional $420 in 2006, Quaker has invested in over 25 companies, most based in the tri-state area.

We talked to Founding Partner Sherrill Neff about why Quaker only invests locally, how the citiy’s biotech market has evolved and why he credits lion slaying as one of his hobbies.

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Shop Talk: A detailed look at Philly’s Q2 venture capital numbers

In our last post about VC numbers, we told you, fair reader, that no region experienced growth like Philadelphia. Though to be clear, that growth was mostly because of three mega deals. We also told you that more detailed numbers were expected from PricewaterhouseCoopers on August 3rd.

Well, we would never leave you hanging.

We dove into the numbers and pulled out the important parts, such as which Philly firms were busiest this quarter, the Philadelphia companies receiving the most investment and what industry received the most attention.

Follow past the jump for your quarterly dose of our regions venture capital activity.
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Quaker Bioventures invests in Rapid Micro Biosystems

Quaker BioVentures, a venture capital firm based in University City’s Cira Center, has been on a roll the past month.

In June, partner David King was named to the board of the University City Science Center and the company was profiled in the Wall Street Journal for shifting some of its resources from biotech to medical devices.

The good news continued yesterday when it was announced that Quaker was one of the Series A investors in Rapid Micro Biosystems, a company that makes technology to detect troublesome microbes that can slow down the drug-making process.

When Technically Philly asked for the exact share Quaker BioVentures invested, the company said it does not disclose amounts.

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Friday Tech Links: Our life sciences sector rocks, the Commodore and More

In which we link out to the tech news from Philly and elsewhere (when it matters) that slips through the cracks and make it way fun. See others here.

Our region’s life sciences sector ranked first in the “current impact” category, and second overall (to Boston, bah), in a biotechnology industry study conducted by the Milken Institute, according to a report by the Philadelphia Business Journal’s John George, a proud graduate from Temple University-Ambler. As we earlier suggested, this is really one of the more impactful, meaningful and substantiated stupid lists Philadelphia has been put in during recent years.

That news preceded the announcement of one of the year’s largest life sciences venture capital deals happening here. University City’s Avid Radiopharmaceuticals scored a $34.5 million financing, led by a San Francisco VC firm, but assisted by a couple of local boys, BioAdvance, also a Penn neighbor, and Safeguard Scientifics of Wayne, as also reported by George of PBJ.

California tries to ban violent video games for kids, a (sorta) regional Web site management company makes a big aquisition and a lot of messed up Craigslist stories you should read — in addition to our most trafficked post of the week — after the jump.

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Friday Tech Roundup: Cell phone driving ban, Police brutality spread on social media and More

In which we link out to the tech news from Philly and elsewhere (when it matters) that slips through the cracks and make it way fun. See others here.

• The Philadelphia Business Journal reports that the city’s cell phone ban is for real now. After passing City Council last week, it seemed doomed from statewide angst for a municipality creating a varying driving standard. It seems some state funding is still in danger because of the move.

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