Biomedical engineer and Carnegie Mellon University grad Dr. Meel Velliste was one of several researchers hawking some of the region's most promising technology to investors early yesterday morning.

Dr. Velliste was standing beside a computer-generated video and drawings of a monkey that was able to control his prosthetic arm using brain signals. The technology, which Dr. Velliste is fine-tuning alongside fellow University of Pittsburgh researcher Dr. Andrew Schwartz, uses electrodes in the brain to send signals to the motor cortex, which controls arm movement.

Velliste's science is still what you might call "a diamond in the rough," awaiting the right investors and management team to bring it to market. Hence, Velliste, in a sports coat, was chatting up curious passers-by as they filtered through the University of Pittsburgh's fourth "First Look" Technology Showcase, which exhibited Pitt and CMU technologies ripe to be turned into companies. On the other side of the room were young firms commercializing technologies just out of the lab.

The bio-focused upstarts ready for investors to take a peak, included former Birchmere Ventures partner Dr. Bernard Cambou's StageMark Inc, Dr. Lans Taylor's latest company, Cellumen Inc., and Cohera Biomedical Adhesives Inc., one of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's newest commercial ventures, which has yet to ink-the-deal on a chief executive officer to lead the operation.

Cohera has developed a non-toxic, biodegradeable adhesive called "TissuGlu," which is absorbed into the body as surgical wounds heal. Pitt's Director of the Office of Enterprise Development, Health Sciences, Carolyn Green, whose team hosted the affair, said Cohera is currently in the animal trials stage. Cohera is raising money, somewhere between $500,000 and $2 million although Ms. Green declined to be specific, citing Securities and Exchange Commission regulations.

This year's event was larger than the last with 13 technologies and 13 companies displayed for investors to pick and choose. Among the exhibitors was another one of Babs Carryer's technology start-ups. No, it wasn't software firm RemmCom Inc. which has already demonstrated its prowess on behalf of the Red Cross' Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, but MidasBio Inc., a product of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute.

Ms. Carryer said that MidasBio produces a string of biomarkers that can quickly send red flags if a disease is present. Ms. Carryer and MidasBio are developing the technology to detect the first signs of ovarian cancer, but she said it can be tailored to catch breast, pancreatic and prostate cancers with a very simple blood test.

MidasBio is one of a handful of the local start-ups that Ms. Carryer, who is known locally as "She-EO," instead of CEO, is working with, thanks to her reputation for quickly stepping into to serve as an interim leader for fledgling firms in need of a temporary captain.

CMU along with the Tepper School of Business have spun out another tech start-up. Industrial Learning Systems is led by a duo of fresh-faced Tepper School grads, CEO Michael Helman and Chief Technology Officer Rajeev Kutty, and Dr. Erik Ydstie, an erudite professor of chemical engineering. The group is developing software that will help a range of companies better control their chemical processes, and save time, money and energy. The company, whose technology is based upon years of research conducted by Dr. Ydstie, recently has been signed as an Idea Foundry portfolio firm, the Oakland-based economic development group that helps turn university science into companies. To boot, Industrial Learning Systems Inc. has two large, undisclosed corporate partners trying out its software. A hint: one is a locally based Fortune 500 firm.

As expected, former Ariba Inc. president Dave McCormick was confirmed by the U.S. Senate yesterday as the Department of Commerce's undersecretary for export administration. Dr. McCormick was CEO of FreeMarkets Inc. before the Downtown firm was sold to the Sunnyvale-based Ariba last year. It turns out that Pittsburgh isn't the only city suffering from the oft-lamented "brain drain" -- the exodus of young talent in search of better opportunities. Boston officials, it turns out, are wringing their hands over the same issue. Believe it.

This reported back from participants in the Allegheny Conference on Community Development's recent benchmarking trip to Boston in which nearly 100 business and nonprofit leaders and a few elected officials spent three-days sizing up Boston from every angle, including education, the arts, economic development and transportation.

In its quest to capture young people, Boston struggles for different reasons than Pittsburgh. Two-bedrooms starting at $440,000 and a high cost of living, it appears, can kill a city's sexiness, even for a 24-year-old. To top it off, the tech bust of 2001 didn't help matters as the industry shrunk, shuttering firms and leaving young techies without work. Consequently, many young people relocated.

The topic sparked interesting conversations among the group, participants said, where in Pittsburgh, the big sucking sound is of young "singletons" fleeing for hipper cities with higher-paying jobs and cooler bars. As Strip District-based consultant Pat Clark said, [hearing Boston's troubles] was "kind of a freak show, bizarro world. On the whole, I'd almost rather have our problem."

The Regional Education Alliance for Technology is hosting a forum to discuss how schools can embrace cyber-learning and virtual classrooms in an increasingly Internet-dependent age. Presenting will be Dr. Nick Trombetta, chief administrative officer of the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School; Mark Gensimore, project manager of Blendedschools.net Inc.; and Dr. David Martin, principal at PA Learners Online. The event at the Regional Learning Alliance at 850 Cranberry Woods Drive, Cranberry, is from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Wednesday. The cost is $15 and the event is open to the public.