QIAGEN N.V. (NASDAQ: QGEN) has announced results of operations for the fourth quarter and full-year 2011, making significant progress on strategic initiatives to drive growth and innovation.

Net sales in the fourth quarter advanced 17% (+17% at constant exchange rates, or CER) to $334.4 million from the fourth quarter of 2010. Adjusted operating income in the quarter grew 16% to $95.6 million compared to the fourth quarter of 2010 as the adjusted operating income margin was steady at 29% of net sales. Adjusted diluted earnings per share (EPS) rose to $0.31 in the fourth quarter of 2011 from $0.26 in the same quarter of 2010. Results for the fourth quarter of 2011 included a restructuring charge of $75 million for a project announced in November to enhance productivity by streamlining the organization and freeing up resources for reallocation to strategic initiatives.

The Tech Council of Maryland    has named Art Jacoby, a Catonsville, Md.-based small business consultant, as its interim CEO.

Jacoby, who is also a managing partner at Maryland Cyber Investment Partners, will head up the technology and biotech trade group while it looks for a full-time replacement for former chief executive Renee Winsky, who left the council in December. In an interview Monday, Jacoby said he expects to hold the position for two to five months – however long it takes to find a permanent chief.

Gov. Martin O‟Malley will call for more than $6 million to spin research conducted at university labs    into new companies, aides said Tuesday.

The proposal seeks to address the gulf between the state‟s strong track record in attracting research dollars and relative lack of success in turning that funding into commercial ventures, an issue that commands the attention of academics and business leaders alike.

The new state allotment would be used to fund promising technologies and fund research of others.

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A decade ago, Maryland's chief competition in the bioscience industry came from the coasts: New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts on the East and California on the West.

Since then, a crop of emerging biotech clusters has started to make its mark, hailing from the Midwest and farther south into Texas and Florida.

As these new competitors seek their place in the market, Maryland's state officials and business executives hope to maintain and expand its biotech presence through a strategy of organic growth.

Healthcare is caught in a slow-motion collision between two 21st Century realities. The world’s growing and aging population creates ever-greater needs for treatment. At the same time, limited resources constrict the availability of quality care.

Perhaps half the people who die each day – more in poor areas – suffer from diseases that are preventable or curable. While medical advances do help patients live longer, the costs of care are rising. And even as science discovers new mechanisms of disease, medicine relies too much on trial and error.

The good news is, solutions are at hand to improve the health of the world’s 7 billion people. We can transform healthcare systems to care for patients in more sustained and cost-effective ways.

Elana Fine, who heads an angel investor network organized by the University of Maryland    ’s Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship, has been promoted to replace Dingman’s longtime managing director, Asher Epstein.

The leadership shuffle comes at a time when the Dingman Center Angels is sharply stepping up its investment activity, inking eight early-stage deals in 2011 — twice as many as it signed in 2010. The angel group was formerly known as the Capital Access Network but rebranded last year.

The legislative compromise on a short-term payroll tax extension dominated headlines in late December, but few journalists heralded a provision that was included in the bill that will help small businesses and boost America’s economy: the six-year reauthorization of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.

The SBIR program helps empower our nation’s small entrepreneurs by funding a major federal Research & Development endeavor, creating new jobs and growing our economy. As a member of the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, I have been a long-time supporter of this highly successful program.

An innovative Maryland technology transfer program - the first of its kind in the United States to partner federal labs and public universities - has received an award honoring its success.

The Maryland Proof of Concept Alliance, which teams the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) and the University System of Maryland, was recognized as a national model by a group representing federal labs.

The Mid-Atlantic Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer (FLC) - has made the Alliance the first recipient of its Partnership Award honoring successful collaborations between educational institutions and federal labs.

The four states with the nation’s largest biotech clusters showed that they too were not immune to challenges common to most U.S. regions seeking to build their life science presence. Hurdles included a capital squeeze particularly for early-stage biopharmas, the reality of the industry’s international growth, and the need to attract new businesses and retain existing ones.

All four top-tier biotech states—California, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Maryland—did, however, find numerous ways to address these challenges. They rolled out new financing programs or tweaked existing ones. In some cases they reached out to regions around the world. In others they identified promising niches within their clusters. Signs of success could be seen in a series of new construction and expansion projects.

As the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel consolidates several of its major areas, it has tapped a science veteran of almost 30 years to ensure it is ready to meet the needs of its federal military and research customers.

“We need to make sure we strategically invest program development funds to best support our customers,” said Charles Goldblum, who was recently named business area executive for the lab’s new department.

The Research and Exploratory Development Department was created this fall to develop and nurture new technologies to meet emerging national challenges.