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Inveresk Plans Stock Offering
Cary-based Inveresk Research Group Inc. (www.inveresk.com) said it plans to participate in a public offering of up to 10 million shares of common stock. The offering is expected to price late in November and to be completed by early December. The company plans to offer 1 million shares, with stockholders offering the remaining 9 million.

Some of the selling shareholders are expected to grant an overallotment option to the underwriters of the offering for an additional 1.5 million shares, Inveresk officials said. Inveresk is a provider of drug development services to companies in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. In addition to its Cary headquarters, the company also has facilities in Edinburgh, Scotland, and Montreal, Canada.

Inveresk Research Group has been a CED member since 2003.

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Charlotte's HRAmerica Acquires The Avenue Group
Charlotte-based HRAmerica has acquired Charlotte-based The Avenue Group, a firm that specializes in business consulting, work force development and training. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Officials said the acquisition will help HRAmerica provide all of its services in-house and will also help the company improve service delivery to clients.

Founded in 1998, HRAmerica focuses on work force development that delivers human resource services based on customer-driven need. The company offers employee administration services such as payroll and benefits administration, employee benefit plans, HR compliance and business consulting and training.

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Salix Obtains Exclusive Rights to aaiPharma's Drug Azasan
Raleigh-based Salix Pharmaceuticals (www.salix.com) has acquired exclusive rights to sell three different doses of aaiPharma's immunomodulator drug Azasan in North America. The agreement calls for Salix to make an up-front payment to aaiPharma as well as on-going royalty on net sales, and for aaiPharma to supply Salix with the products.

The license gives Salix the right to market the 25 mg, 75 mg and 100 mg strengths of Azasan, also known as azathioprine. Officials said aaiPharma (www.aaipharma.com) also granted Salix a right of first discussion with respect to other future aaiPharma gastrointestinal disease products that it out-licenses.

Salix Pharmaceuticals is a CED member.

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N.C. State Awarded $920,000 Grant from National Science Foundation
North Carolina State University's College of Education has been awarded a $920,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to develop a certificate program in science, technology, engineering and mathematics community college teaching. The departments of Adult and Community College Education and Mathematics, Science and Technology Education are teaming on the three-year project entitled “Development of Master's and Online Certificate Programs in STEM Community College Teaching.”

The three-year project is intended to increase the technological literacy of community college faculty by developing online community college teaching technology certificate programs. The program is also intended to attract a broader, more diverse audience to teaching science, mathematics and technology in community colleges. NC State College of Education faculty will lead the project with a panel of administrators and faculty from the community college systems of North Carolina and South Carolina.

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Corning, IBM Partner on $20 Million Dept. of Energy Project
Corning Incorporated and IBM have teamed up with the US Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) on a $20 million project to develop high-speed, optically switched interconnects for supercomputers. Supercomputers allow researchers to experiment with virtual systems and processes that are too dangerous, big, or unpredictable to control in reality. Commercial applications of supercomputing include drug design, weather forecasting and film animation.

The program will accelerate the development of high speed optical technology aimed at increasing network bandwidth by 50 times while reducing the cost of supercomputers, all of which are attributes required to surpass electronic interconnect technologies. IBM (www.ibm.com), the largest technology employer in the RTP, will deploy its research labs in the United States and Switzerland to help with the project.

IBM has been a CED member since 2001.

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Interactive Multimedia Solutions Announces Affiliate Marketing Program
Interactive Multimedia Solutions, Inc. (www.ims3d.com), a provider of voice-to-animation software solutions for the multimedia market, has formally announced its Affiliate Marketing Program. This new program allows anyone to sell IMS products via the Web with no set-up or distribution fees required at enrollment. Currently, the IMS CharacterCreator and IMS CharacterGenerator Studio products are available for distribution under this program. These products target users of the Director MX product from Macromedia Inc.

The IMS Affiliate Program gives any reseller or individual the ability to sell its multimedia software products on their Web site, while obtaining a commission for each sale. The introductory commission rate for resellers is 30% per sale. More details on the new program are available online at http://www.ims3d.com/ims_partners_AffiliateMarketing.html.

Interactive Multimedia Solutions has been a CED member since 2002.

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Events Update

November 10th - 11th — Southeastern BIO Investor Conference 2003
November 13th — CED Information Session for Prospective Members
November 14th — CFO Roundtable
November 19th — CED Capital Connection Information Session
November 19th — Technology Forum - Outsourcing Strategies: Entrepreneurs Weigh Pros and Cons