A U.S. Department of Labor assistant secretary toured the nationally recognized UCF Technology Incubator on Friday afternoon and met with the leaders of several emerging businesses that have flourished at the incubator.

Veronica “Ronnye” Vargas Stidvent, the assistant secretary for policy, stressed the importance of education for developing a well-trained work force. She noted that because the nation’s and state’s unemployment rates remain low, the main problem now isn’t the lack of jobs.

“The challenge that we’re all having to deal with is the skills gap,” she said. “We need to make sure that workers have the education and training for the jobs that have been created.”

Stidvent visited UCF with U.S. Rep. Ric Keller, R-Orlando, and Linda South, director of the Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation, to hold a roundtable discussion with UCF representatives and chief executive officers of incubator companies. Stidvent and South also toured three of the incubator’s most successful firms.

The incubator, which opened in 1999, has served more than 80 emerging companies that have generated nearly 700 jobs with an average salary of $60,000 and more than $100 million in revenues. Such success in starting and growing high-tech companies earned the incubator the industry’s highest honor in 2004, when it was named the Technology Incubator of the Year by the National Business Incubation Association. Several of the incubator companies have ties to UCF. Some are led by alumni who have graduated with degrees in fields such as optics and photonics, engineering and modeling and simulation. Others work with university faculty and students on research that helps them to launch new technologies on the market.

In addition to the CEOs, participants in the roundtable discussion included M.J. Soileau, vice president for research at UCF; Cameron Ford, an associate professor of management and the founding director of the university’s Technological Entrepreneurship Center; and John Lewis, economic development administrator for Orange County.

Lewis described the county’s many economic development partnerships with UCF. Those partnerships include the incubator, the Thomas D. Garofalo Institute for Economic Competitiveness and the Venture Lab, which strives to help people turn ideas for new products into start-up companies.

During their tour of the incubator, Stidvent and South visited AVT Simulation, a company with about 30 employees that has developed simulations of Apache helicopter cockpits in which pilots work together in training scenarios. They also toured Cognoscenti Health Institute, a clinical laboratory that handles samples for 1,000 patients a day, and Mydea Technologies Corp., which uses computer-aided designs and direct digital manufacturing with plastic, metal and other materials.

About AVT Simulation, Inc.
AVT Simulation was founded in 1998 to provide professional engineering services and training solutions to the simulation, training and entertainment markets. Since its inception, AVT has been fortunate to provide our highly specialized staff of engineers to some of the top leaders in the simulation industry. With an average of over 20 years of simulation experience, our dedicated staff provides specialized solutions for customers requiring point solutions to complex problems. Located in the University of Central Florida Research Park, AVT has forged relationships and partnerships within the Research Park to bring together a synergistic team of highly specialized expertise to provide our customers with the best products and services the industry can offer. AVT is a minority-owned business qualified under the Small Business Administration 8(a) program.

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Tel: 407-381-5311
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