Innovation, influence and business in America's medical cities.

The Austen BioInnovation Institute in Akron has received a $2.6 million Third Frontier grant for biomedical sensor research and commercialization.

Ohio Third Frontier backers are pulling out the big names — and hoping for the big bucks — for a campaign aimed at getting voters to approve a $700 million bond issue to renew the state’s biggest economic development project during the May 4 primary election.

An information session about a campaign to get the $700 million Ohio Third Frontier bond issue passed by voters in May will be held from 10:30 a.m. to noon on Tuesday, Feb. 23, at the Holiday Inn, Independence.

A joint resolution to put a bond issue that renews the Ohio Third Frontier project on the May 4 ballot was adopted by the Ohio Senate Tuesday — at half its original size — and is on its way back to the Ohio House.

Quality Electrodynamics, touted in the past for its technology and as an example of how state-funding creates winning companies, was named one of the country’s most promising young companies by Forbes magazine.

Ohio left the Technology Investment Tax Credit, Ohio Venture Capital Fund and Innovation Ohio Loan Fund intact. Advocates who work with those projects said they can leverage economic problems nationally to draw in more business, maximize funding and lure venture investors into the state they may not have otherwise.

Several members of the Ohio Department of Development’s Technology and Innovation Division will brief the public on Third Frontier grant opportunities in the coming fiscal year on Friday, July 17, at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Independence.

The money will push two stem-cell technologies deeper into clinical trials and create Ohio’s first Pluripotent Stem Cell Facility.

The two devices are the first of three projects in the pipeline for Enhanced, which was started in 2005 through a $1.2 million grant from the Ohio’s Third Frontier program.

Ohio’s technology development project — the Third Frontier — has granted $6 million to two biomedical commercialization efforts in the state. One $3 million grant goes to develop and bring to market medical devices made from nitinol; the other, to develop and commercialize a technology that treats medical device materials to make them stronger, longer-lived and resistent to cracks.