President Obama’s reversal of federal funding restrictions on research using embryonic stem cells prompted some interesting commentary last week, along with some related developments among local startups. We also have news about the expanding world of mobile media and wireless mapping technologies, so read on!

—No one is expecting immediate and widespread changes after the Obama Administration re-opened the door to federal funding for stem cell research, but some Xconomists say it represents an important new opportunity.

—One of the most perceptive commentaries I’ve read about the shift came from Seattle Xconomist Randall Moon, a professor of pharmacology at the University of Washington, and a co-founder of Fate Therapeutics.

—San Diego’s Fate Therapeutics, which is developing drugs to spur stem cells into action, said last week it has recruited a couple of renowned scientific leaders to its roster. The company named Ken Batchelor, a former senior research executive at drug giant GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE: GSK), as its chief scientific officer and Dan Shoemaker, previously chief scientific officer at San Diego-based ICx Biosystems to be its chief technology officer.

—Amid the burst of stem cell news, the timing also was ideal for Stemgent to announce it has raised $14 million in venture funding. The startup based in Cambridge, MA, and San Diego specializes in providing reagents and other materials for stem cell research labs.

—We also had a spate of news on the wireless front. After touring the San Diego-based network operations center of Qualcomm’s MediaFLO mobile TV service, I was impressed with MediaFLO’s ability to provide live news and sports coverage. It would be interesting to see what might happen if Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) MediaFLO could broadcast an extended sporting event—say all the games of the NCAA’s college basketball tournament.

—At the Nokia Research Center in Palo Alto, CA, the Finnish mobile communications giant is amassing a vast database of information about the comings and goings of cell phone users. This could prove important as Nokia and San Diego’s Qualcomm move forward … Next Page »

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“Robot coming through…Robot.”

That was the cry, heard throughout the day Saturday at Boston University’s Agganis Arena, scene of the Boston regional finals of the annual FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) robotics competition. The robots were constantly on the move as teams ushered them back and forth from the competition area—think basketball, with lots of twists for this year’s theme—to the staging area/work zones “backstage.”

As always, the finals were a wild affair with lots of screaming and yelling, blaring rock music, face paint galore, and costumes that would have done Rocky Horror fans proud (to give you a clue, the guy announcing all the teams wore a cape and skated around the floor on roller blades). I was there for much of the morning, speaking with competitors and planners and a few guests that included iRobot founders Helen Greiner (an Xconomist) and Colin Angle, human genome sequencer Craig Venter, Marc Hodosh (another Xconomist and chair of Boston FIRST), and FIRST National Advisor and MIT engineering professor Woodie Flowers, among others. (Flowers was lowered by cable from the rafters at last year’s FIRST event, to the tune of Mission Impossible. This year, he told me, “I came in through the back door.”) I didn’t speak to annual judge Steve Wozniak, a founder of Apple Computer, because he wasn’t there. The reason: he will compete on Dancing With the Stars, which airs tonight. The entire crowd, though, did a shout out to him at Friday night’s opening, crying out in unison: “GOOD LUCK WOZ!” (Hodosh says they are sending in the video to the TV show, in hopes it will air tonight.)

Some 53 teams, most, but not all (see below) from around New England, took part in the event. But that’s just a fraction of the entire competition. Last year, when you include all age groups taking part in FIRST, the organization drew more than 160,000 young people from 38 countries worldwide. What I saw was just a piece of the high-school category, which itself drew 1,500 teams last year—and should be even bigger this year.

The basic idea for the high-school event is that all teams must begin with the same core electronics and motors. They then can spend up to another $3,500, with no part costing more than $400, to fine-tune and evolve their robots, which enter into “coopetition”—both competing against and cooperating with—other teams in a series of ever-changing alliances.

This year’s game was called Lunacy. It was a basketball-type game played on a hockey rink-type floor (without the ice). As the game description goes, “Two three-team robot alliances … Next Page »

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Most of the teams that gathered at the San Diego Sports Arena last week came from the American Southwest—from places like Flagstaff, AZ, and El Centro, CA. One team came all the way from Pennsylvania. Another came from Brazil. But these teams didn’t come to the arena to play hockey, football, or some other sport.

They came to show that they could build a better robot. They came for the San Diego regional FIRST Robotics Competition. As a foreign visitor seeing this kind of competition for the first time, I was amazed and had incredible fun just watching it.

The sports arena was filled with strange-looking robots, cables, containers, bolts, joysticks, duct tape, rock music, cheering, and teen-agers—thousands of spirited, excited teen-agers. The San Diego event, which ended Saturday, is part of an annual high school engineering contest organized by FIRST, For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. It drew dozens of high school teams for an event that requires students to spend six weeks building robots to scrimmage against each other in a game.

Miss Daisy was a regional winner

I work as a newspaper reporter in Finland, and I haven’t heard of anything like this in Europe. I was amazed by the passion and enthusiasm that FIRST has inspired among the high school students. These students help each other, love what they are doing, and show it.

The student-built robots don’t look like something you’d see in a sci-fi movie. These robots are heavy plastic boxes, about four-feet tall, that whirl on wheels. Others look like modified shopping carts.

The robots in the 2009 competition were designed to play a game called Lunacy, which is played on a small court. The robots are supposed to scoop up “orbit balls” as if they are on the moon collecting moon rocks. During the first 15 seconds of each match, the robots play the game by themselves in autonomous mode. Six robots compete at a time, divided into two teams selected five minutes before … Next Page »

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Saturday’s regional high school robotics competition held at Boston University’s Agganis Arena event set records for attendance, mayoral wowing, and sci-tech luminary gazing. Two teams from Massachusetts, one from New Hampshire, and one from New York state were among the big winners.

That’s the report from Xconomist Marc Hodosh, chair of Boston FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology). On Saturday, I posted a short account of my visit to the (extremely loud) event—and of emcee Woodie Flowers’s spectacular arrival, which you can now see on YouTube. But I had to leave before it wrapped up, and so I asked Hodosh for an update on the winners and his take-home thoughts from the competition. It turns out the top prize, called the chairman’s award, went to Agawam High School of Agawam, MA. The award recognizes not the winner of the competition, but “the team that best represents a model for other teams to emulate and best embodies the purpose and goals of FIRST,” according to the FIRST website. In order of their finish, the three winners of the competition, meanwhile, were Shenendehowa High School, of Clifton Park, NY; Trinity High School, Manchester, NH; and Tewksbury Memorial High School, Tewksbury, MA. All will join Agawam at the finals in Atlanta this April, along with Rookie All Star award winner Watertown (MA) High School and Engineering Inspiration prize winner, Leominster (MA) High.

For a list of other award winners, go here. Following are some highlights from Hodosh’s report:

—Boston FIRST Regional attracted 7,200 spectators this year, on Saturday alone. Blue Man Group was spectacular and really helped draw in the public and expose them to FIRST.

—We tried to mimic major sports, we know that works…and had ‘entertainment’ just like the Superbowl has a special half-time show…We had Blue Man Group, which ultimately climaxed into featuring Woodie Flowers, well-known professor/engineer, who descended from rafters using robotic rope climbing device from Atlas Devices (used for military usually). The 1st year, we introduced our emcee via the water tank inside a Zamboni. 2nd year we introduced the emcee via an autonomous Kiva Systems robot (our head ref, Benge Ambrogi, works there), 3rd year… Woodie Flowers descends from the rafters after an amazing performance by Blue Man Group…. 4th year… WHO KNOWS!… but it WILL be bigger and better!

—2008 Boston FIRST regional was largest attended FIRST regional event…ever.

—51 teams in total, most MA, but also other states including Ohio, CT, ME, NH, RI

—Mayor Menino was pleasantly surprised… staying longer than expected. He visited all the Boston area teams that were competing in the pits and addressed the attendees.

—Special judges, luminaries in their field included: Woz (Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple), Colin Angle (co-founder and CEO of iRobot—and budding movie star), Bob Metcalfe (co-inventor of the Ethernet)

—Special guests/VIPs who attended include: John Abele (founder of Boston Scientific and chair of FIRST), George Church (Harvard biologist), Marvin Minsky (MIT artificial intelligence pioneer), Henri Termeer (CEO of Genzyme), Paul Sagan (CEO of Akamai), Dennis Berkey (President of WPI), Jeff Shames (Chairman, Berklee School of Music), Ken Zolot (MIT), Anne Swift (founder, Young Inventors International), Ihor Lys (founder Color Kinetics) & Fritz Morgan (CTO Color Kinetics), Michael Hawley (formerly of Media Lab), and Bob Frankston (co-creator of VisiCalc).

—We are running out of room to hold people, the arena is at capacity and we are looking at options. It’s amazing that “Science and technology” can attract so many people in a competitive environment that is stimulating kids to learn and solve problems… and recognizing “true’” heroes of society.

—I feel great synergy between FIRST and my work at X PRIZE. These FIRST kids are the “future” competitors in X PRIZE competitions! We need them! It is very likely that some of them will land on Mars, solve the cure for cancer, learn the keys about human aging, etc.

FIRST founder Dean Kamen very much wanted to attend, Hodosh reports. But he “needed to be at the launch of the inaugural Hawaiian Regional, organized by the Governor of Hawaii.”

Let’s see, Boston in March or Hawaii…we understand, Dean.

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I have to admit the sight of legendary MIT engineering prof Woodie Flowers being lowered from the Agganis Arena ceiling over a sea of robots and screaming fans as the Mission Impossible theme song blared was pretty cool.

That was just part of the gala kickoff of today’s Boston regional finals of the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) robotics competition—Flowers was the emcee—held before a packed house at Boston University’s swank gym. It was a wild and wooly event that drew 51 high school robot-building teams from around New England. Before Flowers descended on us, we were treated to a special performance by the Blue Man Group and a welcome from Boston mayor Tom Menino (The Blue Men were a tad more exciting, but the mayor kept it short.)

I went over this morning, joining a crowd of folks who included Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak (a judge), and Xconomists Marc Hodosh (chair of Boston FIRST), John Abele (chair of FIRST and Boston Scientific co-founder and chairman), George Church, Ken Zolot, and Anne Swift. It was fun going down into the pits, where the teams were tuning up, making repairs, and hammering out strategy during the preliminary rounds that thinned out the ranks to some 24 teams for the afternoon finals.

You can read all about FIRST, which was dreamed up by inventor Dean Kamen, and the robot competition here. The basics are that teams all start with the same core motors and electronics. They can then spend up to $3000 to build their robot, which must compete against—and with—other teams.

This year’s game was called Overdrive, which took place on a small, carpeted oval track. Two alliances of three teams each played at the same time. The goal was to knock giant balls off a rack, then to race around the circuit. Alliances scored points for each lap they completed, as well as for moving balls across the finish line or over the rack.

It’s all done to blaring music and lots of cheering. Abele explained at a private luncheon that the fact the teams compete in different alliances over multiple rounds gives them incentives to mentor and work with other teams even as they compete: “coopetition.” Kamen, also an Xconomist, blogged about the motivation behind the event in You Get What You Celebrate.

I had to leave before the event finished—but I will be sure to update you on the winners, who will go on to the finals at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta from April 17-19.

But it really doesn’t matter who wins. The real point, of course, is to build excitement about science, engineering, and technology, as well as to teach cooperation and “gracious professionalism,” which was a theme of the event. Partly to that end, the judges were busy handing out a slew of awards, not for scoring points but for things like respect and collaboration, mentorship, design elegance, engineering features, spirit, and more. As Woz told me at the buffet line, “We have a lot of awards. Only one is for winning.”

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People think we have an education crisis, and that fixing some or all of the elements of “supply”—more teachers, more computers, more books, more standards, more tests, etc.— will solve the problem. My view is that we don’t have an education crisis, and we don’t have a supply crisis—we have a “demand” crisis. We need to create demand among kids to make science, technology, and engineering every bit as appealing and rewarding as bouncing a basketball or performing on a stage. Surely, that would better leverage the hundreds of billions of dollars that we already spend annually on the “supply” side of education.

On Saturday morning January 5th, the kickoff of the 2008 FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition will be held in Manchester, NH, and broadcast worldwide by NASA. FIRST’s goal is to “change our culture.” FIRST is about inspiring kids. It’s about connecting them with mentors from the technical community, the genuine role models and heroes who have created our standard of living and quality of life. In the FIRST environment, kids see science, technology, and innovation as being every bit as accessible, rewarding, and fun as any sport or other general activity.

FIRST is succeeding. I’m happy to report that this year we already have more than 13,000 schools signed up. From our Junior Lego League to our mid-level Tech Challenge competition to our most advanced FIRST Robotics Competition, we engage students from elementary through high school. Our March Madness regional competitions will be hosted in 41 cities, mostly across the U.S., from Boston to Honolulu, but including a few in Canada, one in Sao Paolo, Brazil, and one in Tel Aviv, Israel. On April 17-19, the 2008 FIRST finals will be hosted in the 72,000-seat home of the 1996 Olympics, the Georgia Dome in Atlanta.

So demand is growing. Just as high school basketball impacts significantly more than just the team members, FIRST is impacting the larger community. In fact, FIRST is having an impact beyond the schools. Sponsoring companies, mentors, parents, and a broad range of spectators are exposed to the exciting world of technology. But there’s a lot more to do. Our goal is to make FIRST programs accessible to all students.

I started planning and organizing FIRST in 1989-90; our first competition was held in ’92. Why did we start it? Simple. In a free culture, you get what you celebrate. And in America, we celebrate primarily two activities that create almost all the role models in our culture—entertainment and sports.

Kids who are now growing up in an entirely media-driven culture are really at risk of missing the point. Sports and entertainment are not the cause of our wealth and our success; they’re the result of it. And sports and entertainment are not likely to be the place where kids will make a great contribution to society or derive successful careers for themselves. Many kids spend an inordinate amount of their “magic decade” between 7 and 17 bouncing a ball or dreaming about Hollywood and not developing the skills they will need to succeed in the 21st century.

More kids in our culture are obsessed with Shaquille O’Neal, Britney Spears, or Paris Hilton than are interested in science and technology. This is particularly true among women and minorities. By the time they are 10 years old, many have been convinced that science and technology are beyond their capabilities and that engineering is boring and only the domain of “nerds.” These kids are victims of a culture that promotes the idea that everything should be easy and should offer instant gratification.

Who says to these kids, “You know, the number of people who will actually make money in professional sports is minuscule compared to the number of people who will have great careers in science and engineering”? Nobody ever tells these kids that there are more black surgeons than there are professional basketball players. And that’s really sad.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world is screaming toward 100 percent literacy and focused on the mastery of mathematics, science, and technology. A world where all kids are smart and productive will produce a safer, more sustainable, and exciting environment for all of us. But in the United States, it’s not happening. The way to combat this problem is to start celebrating the right things…hard work, technical excellence, and innovation.

I think FIRST is doing just that. FIRST is about volunteers, as some 61,000 engineers and technical people have already signed up to mentor and support our programs this year. I am confident that they each benefit as much from FIRST as the kids do. FIRST is truly a win-win opportunity for all its stakeholders: schools, corporate sponsors, mentors, universities, parents…the whole community.

But we need more participation. As a company, you could supply resources. As an individual, you could become a participant or enthusiastic spectator. There wouldn’t be a Boston Red Sox if they didn’t have fans. Click on this link and see if there’s a robotics program in your neighborhood. The Boston FIRST Regional will be held on March 28th and 29th, with more than 50 teams participating at the Boston University Agganis Arena.

If we get these kids to celebrate science, technology, and innovation, this country will continue to be the envy of the world. If we don’t do that, we’ll get what we deserve. And we won’t be celebrating.

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