When most people hear the name Zielinski, they think about Rick Moranis’ wacky inventor character in “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.” However, NIU would rather have people think opportunity when hearing the name.

Last month, Jerry Zielinski was named head of the new West Suburban Technology Enterprise Center, or WESTEC for short. The center, jointly located at NIU’s Naperville campus and the DuPage County Technology Park, is one of eight across the state.

It is designed to develop entrepreneurial ideas into commercially viable businesses. Gov. George Ryan named NIU to lead the DuPage County center, which comes with $350,000 from the Illinois Department of Commerce and Community Affairs.

“The center’s chief objective is to create new businesses that come from Northern Illinois and other organizations around the area,” Zielinksi said.

Zielinksi has more than 20 years of experience in the field of technology commercialization and retired from Lucent Technologies last year.

“Although the technology will be coming from a different source, I think I can apply the experience I have gained from previous experiences here,” he said. “The first thing I am doing is trying to understand the areas of technologies that are currently being worked on at Northern.”

John Lewis, associate director of NIU’s Center for Governmental Studies, coordinated the WESTEC proposal.

“I think Northern being the lead institution in this gives us leverage in helping more projects come out of Northern,” he said. “Faculty generally are not quite as good at taking basic research and helping finding industrial usages for it. The center will help them with that.”

Lewis said Zielinksi is the perfect man for the job.

“Jerry brings several years of experience in technology,” he said. “He brings a lot of strong background knowledge and experience in terms of technology and technology commercialization,” he said.

Zielinski will have help. Christy Snider, a former director of marketing and community relations at the Illinois Coalition, recently started her job as WESTEC program manager.

“She has a very strong background,” he said. “She is working with me in the commercialization of technology and developing seminars that we will use to take technology and represent it to businesses.”

Snider hopes to hit the ground running.

“I think getting out in the community, as well as the institutions, and meeting as many people as possible, and making them aware of the resources that are available to them as they look to start their businesses, is one of my initial priorities,” she said.

Snider said this will improve NIU’s standing in the technology community.

“There will be a greater awareness of the technology the institution has,” she said. “With some additional resources behind the researchers and behind the technology, there will be a definite increase in awareness of the activities taking place at NIU.”

Zielinski noted the spiraling economy has made things more challenging, but there always room for true innovators.

“The down economy tends to put a damper on all types of things,” he said. “Funding for start-ups might be viewed more critically; however, there will always be opportunities for people with new ideas opportunities and that’s why we are here.”