What do Cambridge, England, and Halle, Germany, have in common with the University of Maryland, Baltimore County campus?

The locations are home to the only three training programs for women entrepreneurs in the world to be recognized by a partnership of six European universities formed in 2006 to study such programs.

FemStart, the university partnership, recently named the ACTiVATE (Achieving the Commercialization of Technology in Ventures through Applied Training for Entrepreneurs) program at the bwtech@UMBC Research and Technology Park as one of three "Good Practices" programs for training women entrepreneurs.

The other programs are in England and Germany,

The ACTiVATE program trains women with significant technical or business experience to create technology-based start-up companies in Maryland.

Kimberly Brown is one of those women.

"I had a science background but I had no formal business background" before the program, said Brown, who received a doctorate in chemical engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park, in 2005.

Brown credits ACTiVATE with helping her bridge the gap between her biotechnology background and her new role as owner of a business.

The program "gave me a structure, a backbone in how to be successful in a technical business, and that's very important," she said.

She entered the ACTiVATE program on Feb. 8, 2007, just two days before she bought the company she was working for at the time, Cell Systems, Inc.

With the help of the ACTiVATE program, Brown transformed the company into Amethyst Technologies LLC.

Amethyst Technologies, which provides biotechnology services to government agencies, is headquartered at the bwtech@UMBC park.

The company holds a contract with the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research to manage the institute's vaccine validation program, which ensures vaccines developed at the institute "consistently meet the needs of the users and the requirements of the (Food and Drug Administration)," Brown said.

The ACTiVATE program began with a three-year, $712,000 grant from the National Science Foundation in 2004.

It has maintained its presence at bwtech@UMBC through support from corporate sponsors and the Maryland Technology Development Corporation, according to program director David Fink.

In March, it received a President's Award from the Greater Baltimore Committee.

"Every year we kind of marvel at how well the program is doing, and that's not to give ourselves credit.

"It's really looking at how many talented women there are in the region and the state who really want to become technology entrepreneurs," said Ellen Hemmerly, bwtech@UMBC's executive director.

"As a woman, I find it particularly motivating," she said.

The initial concept for the program started after Fink began brainstorming with Hemmerly, bwtech@UMBC's executive director, and Stephen Auvil, the university's assistant vice president for research, on ways to turn technology research into start-up companies, Hemmerly said.

Hemmerly, who, with Auvil, was a co-principal investigator for the initial NSF grant that funded the program, said the recognition from FemStart and the GBC is encouraging.

Also encouraging are the successes of women like Brown who have graduated from the program, she said.

Since 2005, the program has trained nearly 100 women on topics such as intellectual property, financing, marketing, and developing a business plan, and helped to launch close to 25 women-led companies, Fink said.

A joint program of bwtech@UMBC, the UMBC Office of Technology Development and the UMBC-based Alex. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship, ACTiVATE offers women a year-long course taught by female entrepreneurs in the state.

The course aims to "facilitate the transfer of technologies out of the University System of Maryland into start-up companies in Maryland," Fink said.

UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski said the program "provides an awareness of entrepreneurship for a significant number of women, who traditionally have been under-represented among entrepreneurs, while also providing a model for commercializing innovations at universities and federal labs that can be used at other institutions across the country," according to ACTiVATE's Web site.

Fink said ACTiVATE is currently in the middle of its fifth year-long training class.

He said he hopes funding for the program will continue to allow more classes in the future.

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