Colorado’s true economic engine

Few would think of a laboratory when contemplating what fosters economic growth in Colorado. Construction, tourism, manufacturing, retail, energy, real estate, government and other sectors more easily come to mind.

While those industries do constitute important parts of Colorado’s economic mosaic, they don’t reflect another important fact: Research drives the Colorado economy. From Colorado State University in Fort Collins to the University of Colorado in Boulder, from CU’s Anschutz Medical Campus to the Colorado School of Mines, researchers are making discoveries, creating new products and advancing science.

Along the way, researchers at these universities and their colleagues at federal laboratories in…