Two grants totaling $930,000 will be used to fund projects that will help to launch an apprenticeship program and the manufacturing of medicine via new methods.
The Commonwealth’s Growth and Opportunity Board has awarded $930,000 in public grants which will help to start the production of medicine via new methods developed at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) at a Petersburg chemical plant. It will also help to launch an apprenticeship program that will train high-tech mechanics in the local area. The board’s decision came after failing to gain approval after the review of initial proposals. Now, however, the VCU Pharmaceutical Commercialization Program will receive $500,000, and while the apprenticeship program will receive $430,000.
VCU will benefit by being further enabled in its efforts to find ways to manufacture new medicines and drugs in the school’s Medicines for All program, via cheaper and faster methods. With grant money already provided by other sources, VCU's program may make it possible for much-needed AIDS and other potentially life-saving drugs to be more efficiently shipped to Africa and other places where the need for the drugs is dire and urgent. Research will take place in Richmond, which will help accelerate pharmaceutical manufacturing at the Petersburg plant.
The CCAM Apprentice Academy will receive $430,000, which will go towards starting new pilot programs. The “mechatronics” Workforce Training Center will train students, graduates, workers, and soldiers in high-tech industrial maintenance practices, which are a combination of electrical and mechanical engineering and Computer Science. A $12.65 million, 36,000-square-foot facility will eventually house the pilot program at the CCAM Apprentice Academy which is expected to be completed by 2020. Once operational, 200 students will graduate from CCAM’s Apprentice Academy yearly, which will help to fill jobs in the region.
