The Urban Redevelopment Authority's chief, Jerome Dettore, confirmed this week that the group was in talks with the Cleveland-based Ferchill Group to build a 160,000-square-foot, lab-ready building at the Pittsburgh Technology Center in Hazelwood. He said he expected a decision from Ferchill Chief Executive Officer John Ferchill on whether or not to move forward in the next 90 days.

"John Ferchill has stated that he's prepared to go forward with a speculative lab building -- and we believe he's financially sound enough to do it," Mr. Dettore said, adding that he wouldn't rule out another development on the 300,000 square feet along the Monongahela River. "The question is how strong is the market."

North Side-based Helium Networks was recently approved for a "jump-start" grant of $25,000 from the Greater Oakland Keystone Innovation Zone. Helium Networks -- whose former chief executive officer Chintu Parikh departed this year and is now working in California for Yahoo! -- is now led by co-founder Walt Halasowski, with former Fore Systems executive Tom Gill serving as chairman. Helium develops wireless hardware and software systems.

The Greater Oakland Keystone Innovation Zone Board -- the assemblage of the chiefs of several local tech-focused economic development groups -- has reached a consensus on a regional tech-based economic development strategy culled from findings and recommendations made in the draft study produced in the spring by Ohio-based research and development firm Battelle.

The next move, say insiders, is to decide how best to communicate the plan to Pittsburgh's tech community. The road map to growing the local tech industry includes some initiatives that already are under way -- such as economic development group Innovation Works' plan to raise an "angel" capital fund for upstart tech companies. Other initiatives are more forward thinking, such as a plan to erect an incubator to house tech -- not biotech -- startups on the former Hazelwood LTV Coke Works site owned by Almono LLP, a partnership among RIDC, the McCune, Benedum and Richard King Mellon foundations and the Heinz Endowments.

There's no word on when KIZ board members will be ready to publicly discuss the "road map."

The Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse has hired John W. Manzetti to be an executive-in-residence to help mentor and assist Pittsburgh's health-focused startup companies. Mr. Manzetti, who most recently was the president and chief executive officer of M2 Partners, a management services company specializing in tech and biotech startups, will use his experience raising capital and developing successful business process models among other skills, according to Doros Platika, the greenhouse's CEO.

On Monday, the greenhouse will join Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh in launching a jointly operated research center funded by a five-year multimilion-dollar grant from the National Science Foundation. The center will combine a hodgepodge of the schools' strengths -- computer science, robotics and biotechnology from CMU and medicine, bioengineering and rehabilitation science from Pitt.

The foundation grant was harnessed from "proof-of-concept" research funded in part by the greenhouse's "opportunity fund," which provides capital to enable the region's research institutions to retain and train scientific talent and leverage research that has the potential to be spun into the marketplace.

The region may have lost tech veteran Don Pyle, who left his job this year as chief of ECI Telecom's locally based data networking division for Annapolis, Md., to lead networking startup Netcordia. But it's gained Tony Scarfo, who just completed his first week as ECI Telecom's new data networking chief.

Mr. Scarfo arrived in Pittsburgh from Juniper Networks in New Jersey, where he was vice president of global alliances and partnerships. Mr. Pyle, also a Juniper transplant, took the helm at the former Laurel Networks in 2004 and guided it through its $88 million cash sale last year to Israeli-based ECI Telecom. After the sale, he stayed on as a consultant, while founder Atul Bansal stepped in to oversee the firm's daily operations.

Mr. Scarfo spent a large part of his career at Lucent Technologies, heading up several divisions. He said ECI, like some of its local telecom brethren, was hoping to boost its current staff of 140 by 15 to 20 percent in the next six months.

The Oakland-based startup support group, Idea Foundry, also received a $500,000 line item in Pennsylvania's recent budget agreement. Michael Matesic, Idea Foundry's new chief executive officer, said the group should be ready to make an announcement about a partnership with a "national bank with a local presence," by the end of the month. The bank will serve as a co-lender with Idea Foundry on convertible loans of up to $200,000 to local startups. Carnegie Mellon University has signed a $3 million agreement with the Taiwanese government to establish a research program and educational outreach initiative.

Known as the International Collaboration for Advancing Security Technology or iCAST-Carnegie Mellon, the project will focus on a wide variety of security issues, including developing software assurance tools, metrics to measure the effectiveness of intrusion-detection systems and secure video surveillance networks, according to Tsuhan Chen, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at CMU, who will co-direct the project.

Twenty Taiwanese researchers are scheduled to visit Carnegie Mellon to begin work on a variety of security-related projects designed to improve both U.S. and Asian advanced security technologies.