Lyle Anderson, executive director of the Spokane Intercollegiate Research & Technology Institute, has announced to SIRTIs board that he intends to resign this summer.


Andersons contract expires at the end of next month, but at the request of SIRTIs executive committee he has agreed to stay on through the summer while the agency searches for his replacement, Anderson says.


Anderson, who says his specialty is in building up organizations, has decided to leave his post because he believes he has accomplished what he set out to do at SIRTI.


When he was hired in February 1995, he was given two goals: to help entrepreneurs develop technology and commercialize products and to secure long-term funding for SIRTI, Anderson says.


Ive done both of those, he says.


To date, SIRTI says it has launched 27 public-private partnerships that are expected this year to generate $36 million in revenues to participating companies and to create more than 130 new jobs in all by the end of 2000. Anderson says that with the help of SIRTI, eight new technology-based businesses have been launched here and others are successfully attracting private venture capital.


Also, he says that since 1994, SIRTI had been funded primarily with grant money from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is phasing out. Last year, however, SIRTI was able to secure operational funding from the state.


My work here is done, and now Ill look to build up another organization, says Anderson, adding that he hopes to do so in the private sector. He says, though, that he doesnt have any solid plans lined up yet.


Prior to joining SIRTI, Anderson had been the state director of the Washington State Small Business Development Center network, a system with 20 counseling centers and 25 training sites across the state.