By James McNair
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Ohio's Third Frontier Commission has awarded $13 million to projects that Gov. Bob Taft sees as possible enterprises of the future.

The 14 grants, including one to a Cincinnati company, were confirmed Thursday by Norm Chagnon, the commission's staff director in Columbus. They are - and will be - the only grants made in 2003 under the state's Third Frontier Action Fund program, which began in 1998 as the Technology Action Fund.

"All of the dollars are part of the Third Frontier Action Fund's goal of enabling commercialization of more products and processes that are going to create jobs and wealth for the state of Ohio," Chagnon said.

The biggest grant, for $1.18 million, went to a Columbus company called SCI-Engineered Materials in collaboration with four out-of-state companies. It plans to apply the money toward research in the manufacture of thin lithium batteries. Three grants, totaling, $2.8 million, were given to fuel-cell projects upstate.

Girindus America was the lone Greater Cincinnati recipient of technology grant money. The Reading company will spend its $1.16 million grant on the manufacture of genetic medicine.

This week's grants were the eighth round under the program. Chagnon said the next $13 million in grants will be awarded in March - after Taft's new Third Frontier Advisory Board has had a chance to review the program's mission.

The grants are part of Taft's 2-year-old, $1.6 billion Third Frontier program of spurring technology development and industry formation. About a third of its budget is subject to voter approval through a Nov. 4 ballot issue.

The governor is seeking constitutional changes that would allow the state to borrow up to $500 million over 10 years and give the state authority to invest in private companies.

E-mail jmcnair@enquirer.com.