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The National Institutes of Health and the Kavli Foundation separately announced today (Oct. 1, 2015) commitments totaling $185 million in new funds supporting the BRAIN Initiative* — research aimed at deepening our understanding of the brain and brain-related disorders, such as traumatic brain injuries (TBI), Alzheimer’s disease, and Parkinson’s disease.

The NIH announced today its second wave of grants to support the goals of the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative, bringing the total NIH investment to nearly $85 million in fiscal year 2015.

As a New York City based entrepreneur, I’ve been excited to watch as the Big Apple has become the epicenter for innovation on the East Coast. While I mentioned that another industry might be having the biggest 2015, funding for healthcare startups have grown significantly over the past two years. According to a report by Rock Health, over $2 billion has already been invested into health care tech companies this year with a lot of this activity happening locally. In New York, there’s an extremely diverse mix of innovators including accelerators, startups and hospitals.

Here’s a glimpse of some great organizations that are paving the way for the future of health care.

Among a host of new laws that took effect in Maryland on Thursday is a measure that transfers control of the Maryland Venture Fund to the purview of TEDCO.

The changes result in a consolidation of two of the state’s largest early-stage economic development arms under TEDCO, a quasi-public agency that makes investments in startups.

Baltimore education technology company Citelighter and data analysis firm Yet Analytics were crowned the winners of the Beta City pitch competition.

The pitch day was the kickoff event for Beta City, the Oct. 1 entrepreneurship showcase organized by Betamore and Plank Industries, Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank’s private investment arm. Beta City also served as the public debut for Plank Industries’ City Garage, the 133,000-square foot former city bus garage converted to an innovation hub for Under Armour and technology startups.

University of Maryland Research Park today takes home top honors as the Association of University Research Parks’ 2015 Outstanding Research Park, at the AURP Annual Awards of Excellence, hosted by Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. This award program recognizes the achievements of outstanding university research parks and those who direct them, and encourages the development of best practices.

The UM Research Park is a public-private partnership between Corporate Office Properties Trust and the University of Maryland (UMD). UMD works with all Research Park companies to provide synergistic and collaborative opportunities. The Research Park offers locations from incubator space for start up companies to build-to-suit options for larger technology clients.

The Kavli Foundation and its university partners announced this morning the founding of three new neuroscience institutes, including one at Johns Hopkins. The new Kavli Neuroscience Discovery Institute at The Johns Hopkins University, expected to launch in early 2016, will bring an interdisciplinary group of researchers together to investigate the workings of the brain.

The Kavli Neuroscience Discovery Institute, to be funded by a joint $20 million commitment by Kavli and Johns Hopkins, is designed to integrate neuroscience, engineering, and data science—three fields in which the university has long excelled—to understand the relationship between the brain and behavior.

Whether you care about the emphasis on entrepreneurship or the money, AOL co-founder Steve Case’s Sept. 28 visit was big for Baltimore.

This week Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. (NYSE: ARE), the largest and leading office REIT uniquely focused on collaborative science and technology campuses in urban innovation clusters, hosted Converge at Alexandria at the Alexandria Center® for Life Science – New York City. Converge at Alexandria is a quarterly thought leadership series that brings together stakeholders from across the disease continuum to engage in provocative discussions around key topics at the intersection of life science, healthcare and technology. By convening academic and industry experts, community leaders, physicians, patients, philanthropists and other advocates, Converge at Alexandria aims to bring these key issues to the forefront to catalyze new collaborations and partnerships. Surrounded by world-renowned academic and medical institutions, leading scientific talent, top-tier investment capital and an emerging commercial life science industry, New York City provides a unique backdrop for the Converge community to explore the intersection of life science, healthcare and technological innovation.

Before Nick Hanauer was a Seattle billionaire and political activist, he was an early investor in Amazon. Now, he says the city’s next big thing is curing cancer.

Hanauer called out Juno Therapeutic’s (Nasdaq: JUNO) innovative immunotherapy cancer treatments during the GeekWire Summit in Seattle on Thursday. The treatments involve engineering patients’ cells to better battle disease and infusing those blood cells back into the body.

“We are Commerce.”

You’re going to see those three simple words from us a lot in the coming weeks. We are Commerce.

We are marking our transition to the Department of Commerce from the Department of Business and Economic Development today, but this isn’t just about some fresh letterhead and a new logo. (Check it out, it’s really sharp.) This is a cause for some excitement. Our move to Commerce is rooted in a sentiment that has long been pervasive through Maryland’s business community — we can be better. We should be better. We’d better be better if we’re going to compete in the 21st Century.