Ellen Hemmerly, executive director of the UMBC Research Park Corporation, was honored as “Business Person of the Year” earlier this week by the Greater Catonsville Chamber of Commerce. The award recognized the Catonsville resident’s dedication to growing UMBC’s high tech business incubator, accelerator and research park into a successful economic development and job engine for the greater Baltimore region.

The award was a bit of a surprise for Hemmerly, who attended the 2007 Catonsville Business Awards ceremony to give a presentation on the growth of techcenter@UMBC Incubator and Accelerator and bwtech@UMBC Research and Technology Park.

“I was truly delighted to be chosen as the Catonsville Chamber's Business Person of the Year,” said Hemmerly. “The award was a wonderful surprise. It is especially meaningful to me given that it comes from the community where I have lived and worked for many years,” she said.

Under Hemmerly’s leadership, the University’s incubator and research park have grown from an 8,000-square-foot trailer in 1989 to a five-building research park and fully leased incubator facility that will create over 1,500 full- and part-time jobs in the Baltimore region.