North Carolina and the state of Andhra Pradesh, India, have formalized an 18-month agreement to exchange information that will benefit each state's biotechnology industry.
Chandrababu Naidu, Andhra Pradesh's Chief Minister, James T. Fain III, the N.C. Secretary of Commerce, and Dr. Charles E. Hamner, the Center's President and CEO at the time, signed the agreement on Feb. 4, 2002. The ceremony took place before a standing-room-only crowd of about 80 people in the Center's Board of Directors' Room.
"In this event, we have the best combination of the new - biotechnology - and the old - partnership and friends working together," said W. Steven Burke. Burke is the Center's Senior Vice President for Corporate Affairs and External Relations and was the moderator for the signing ceremony.
Naidu and his delegation highlighted Andhra Pradesh's strengths in stem cell, agriculture, and health research. Hamner suggested that the Indian state's current expertise in information technology would be useful in the burgeoning field of bioinformatics, the storage, retrieval and analysis of life science research data.
