Maryland, whose eastern borders hug the perimeter of the US capital, Washington, DC, expects to be one of the primary beneficiaries of the change in leadership at the White House because of the many federal institutions that call the state home.

“The combination of what we invest in our education workforce and the pipeline of trained and accomplished scientists who emanate out of their federal service from such agencies as the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, there is no other state in the country that has as many assets packed in on a per square mile basis as Maryland does,” says governor Martin O’Malley.

Changing times

“And with so many things changing over the course of the last year, Washington is more important than it has ever been.”

The governor’s optimism about the Barack Obama presidency causes him to be equally optimistic about the prospects of the biotech sector in the US.

Obama optimism

“We are very optimistic about it because of President Obama’s emphasis on not only getting our economy moving again but also his openness to making decisions based on science, his willingness to lift the ban on stem-cell research and his willingness very early on to invest, an additional $10bn, I believe it was, in the National Institutes of Health,” he says.

“When we have a president who believes in making our federal government work and making investments in R&D and alternative fuels and cures, these are all of the things that benefit Maryland’s economy and benefit the private sector in Maryland because of the synergy between the private section and the federal institutions.”