BioHealth Innovation Inc. is adding staff and office space to expand its operations in central Maryland.

The Rockville-based organization has created a new position, director of innovation programs, to lead the organization’s effort to help Maryland companies get a greater share of federal funding intended for near-commercialization projects. BioHealth Innovation is a public-private nonprofit organization that helps biohealth companies access funding to commercialize research and connects research outlets with the biotech industry.

Innovation and creation are at the heart of the biotech industry and close to the heart of international business development consultant Richard A. Bendis.

Bendis, 65, has devoted almost 40 years to helping enterprises grow, in both the public and private sector.

Most recently, Bendis was named CEO of the new regional effort to foster commercialization of federal and university laboratory innovations and increase access to early-stage funding for biotechs. BioHealth Innovation of Rockville is a nonprofit private-public partnership that leverages the resources of several biotechs and research institutions, including the University System of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University, in the Baltimore-Washington, D.C., region.

Maryland-based BioHealth Innovation Inc. announced today that its board of directors has named former Interim CEO Richard Bendis the organization's first president and chief executive officer.

Bendis (pictured here) serves as a venture capital investment manager with NEST-TN LLC, a Nashville-based VC fund that the state has certified as a TNInvestco fund.

A Montgomery County Council committee recommended on Monday to contribute $250,000 this fiscal year to a public-private partnership — BioHealth Innovation — that is trying to boost the life sciences industry.

The county’s biosciences task force recommended forming the local nonprofit public-private partnership, among other suggestions, three years ago. Besides the $250,000 supplemental increase by the county in fiscal 2012, the partnership seeks $1.25 million from the county during the following three fiscal years.

The expenditure still needs the approval of the full council — which could come as soon as next week — after the Planning, Housing and Economic Development Committee lent its approval.

The arduous task of converting laboratory research into a promising startup biotechnology company has many laborers. And a fledgling group out of Montgomery County wants to add private-sector employers’ names to the list.

As the Business Journal’s Scott Dance reported last week, BioHealth Innovation Inc. wants to recruit private businesses to help biotech entrepreneurs take the science out of a university lab and into an office park. The tactic, the group’s leaders say, has worked elsewhere, and already, BioHealth Innovation has the backing of such venerable biotechs as Human Genome Sciences and MedImmune.