ALBANY, April 4 -- Seven New York universities will receive more than $2.7 million in awards designed to bring high-tech innovations from the research lab to the marketplace and to spur the creation of new jobs and new companies in the state, Gov. George E. Pataki recently announced. "Our colleges and universities are hard at work conducting research that will lead to the development of new state-of-the-art technologies. By setting up a process to transfer these cutting-edge technologies from an academic setting to the business world, we will spark the creation of even more high-tech companies, jobs and products." Pataki said. The awards are being made through the New York State Office of Science, Technology and Academic Research (NYSTAR) Technology Transfer Incentive Program. Recipients are:The University at Albany, $750,000 to work with Daystar Technologies Inc. to develop optimized substrate templates for CIGS (copper indium gallium diselenide) solar cell applications Binghamton University, $537,000 to partner with Juvent Research in a project focusing on chronic disease prevent and treatment Columbia University, $525,000 to work with Exergen Biosciences to improve searching, cataloging and synthesis of knowledge contained in disparate, highly technical written documents Cornell University, $300,000 to partner with Novomer LLC to create custom biodegradable polymers from renewable resources Clarkson University, $276,000 to partner with Nexpress Solutions LLC in a project focused on the transfer of spinning disk reactor technology for the manufacture of chemically prepared toners University of Rochester, $262,000 to work with Lucid Inc. in the development of an in-vivo clinical coherence digital microscope Rochester Institute of Technology, $100,000 to work with Geospatial Systems Inc. in the development of a compact airborne multispectral mapping system For more information, visit: www.nystar.state.ny.us