SSTI Digest

The overlap between applicants and recipients of the three large regional innovation approaches attempted by the federal government so far continues with the July 9, 2025, NSF narrowing of the field for the second NSF Regional Innovation Engines competition to 29 semifinalists across the country. Predominantly with teams led by universities and university affiliates (25 of the 29 selections), the contenders include 17 NSF Engines Development Awards teams who received two-year planning grants in 2023 and early 2024 that they leveraged to help build coalitions and refine visions for dynamic innovation ecosystems within their regions. It also includes regions that have served as EDA Tech Hubs designees, Tech Hub winners, and recipients of Building Better Regions Phase I and/or Phase II awards.

Seventy-one teams engaged in this round of the competition. One may view a map of the 29 new NSF Engines semifinalists here.

Please note: this article is not intended as a comprehensive review of Public Law No. 119-21, nor should our reading of the law be treated as tax or legal advice.

Now that the dust has settled on the federal budget reconciliation package, Public Law No: 119-21, SSTI presents to its Digest readership our look at the legislation from a technology-based economic development (TBED) perspective. The process nuances, potential fiscal impacts, and broad policy changes of the 870-page act have been extensively covered elsewhere, so we won’t rehash those here. Instead, we will focus on a few key highlights of changes to the tax code and what those could mean for TBED activities.

Over the past 40 years, many people involved in SBIR and empirical analysts in the research, finance, and technology sectors have said SBIR awardees, as a group, are uniquely important for America’s innovation goals. Research presented in a recent NBER working paper provides further evidence backing up those claims and reveals SBIR companies may be preferable for innovation productivity and efficiency—particularly for advancing strategic national, social and environmental goals—to innovation-oriented companies simply backed by venture capital, the finance instrument most often tracked for evidence of innovation success or progress.

SSTI has updated its Key Technology Area Investment Data Tool with new and refreshed data spanning January 1, 2013, through June 30, 2025. The tool comprises two interactive visuals and uses Pitchbook technology verticals selected to align with many of the key technology focus areas (KTFAs) defined in the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 (CHIPS). The tool breaks down the number of investment-backed companies, investment deals, and amount of capital invested by each state, year (2013-2025H1), and investment stage (e.g., seed, angel, venture).

For this update, data through June 30, 2025, were downloaded on July 1, 2025, and built into the provided visualizations on the data tool webpage.

Note that because many investment deals are not subject to disclosure, it is difficult to immediately identify investment activity, often leading to data for more recent years being less complete. This potential for incomplete data is a critical issue to consider when exploring data from the first half of 2025 and other recent periods.

The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is requesting information from the public to help shape potential future updates to its Key Technology Focus Areas (KTFAs). NSF’s KTFAs directly influence and shape innovation- and economic development-related programs. For example, KTFAs have been important factors in the Economic Development Administration’s (EDA) Regional Technology and Innovation Hubs (Tech Hubs) and NSF’s Regional Innovation Engines (Engines) programs which require regions to advance a critical technology area that already has traction in their region.

In 2024, nearly 628,000 job postings demanded at least one AI skill, according to research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s Center for Workforce and Economic Opportunity. The research also revealed that the percentage of all job postings requiring at least one AI skill increased from approximately 0.5% in 2010 to 1.7% in 2024. These numbers, however, do not inform workforce development practitioners or workers selecting training programs about which levels of education produce the most in-demand workers entering the AI-dominated workforce, nor do they indicate which occupations at what level of educational attainment have increasing demand for these skills. To provide these insights, the Fed researchers conducted an examination of the growth in employer demand for AI skills, analyzing online job posting data from 2010 to 2024. 

Patents serve as a powerful tool that promotes the disclosure and diffusion of new innovations while allowing inventors an exclusive period to commercialize and profit from the technology. The U.S., while a hub for innovation and a leader in patents, has experienced stagnation in the growth of Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) applications and USPTO-granted utility patents in recent years. Ever since 2021, China has surpassed the U.S. in PCT applications, and more than half of all USPTO utility patents are owned by foreign entities, including Japan and the European Union. 

This edition of Useful Stats explores U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and PCT patent data compiled from the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics and data from the Business Enterprise R&D (BERD) survey. These data provide a background for how the patent landscape across the U.S. has changed over the past few decades.

If you are an entrepreneurship service organization (ESO), you likely are seeing more companies within your scope adopting artificial intelligence (AI). But how well do you understand their needs for further assistance with the transformative platform technology? A recent report from the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC), “How small business owners are learning, using, and navigating challenges with AI tools,” sheds light on what your companies may be experiencing and offers some recommendations. The findings are based on 3,752 business owners nationwide who responded to an ICIC survey, as well as five focus groups.

Two recent research reports, one from Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce (CEW) and another from Ivy Tech Community College, in collaboration with TEConomy Partners, LLC, focus on credential shortages that are keeping many jobs that don't require a bachelor's degree unfilled.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s (ASPI) report, ASPI’s two-decade Critical
Technology Tracker: The rewards of long-term research investment, aims to identify
which countries and institutions are leading in high-impact research across 64 critical
technological domains, including defense, space, energy, environment, artificial
intelligence, biotechnology, robotics, cyber, computing, advanced materials, and
quantum technologies. The tracker's methodology involves analyzing the top 10% of
highly cited research publications in each critical technology. According to ASPI, this
approach emphasizes research that significantly influences the technological lifecycle
and is likely to lead to patents and breakthroughs. The dataset spans from 2003 to
2023, allowing for both short-term (five-year) and long-term (21-year) trend analyses. 

The report’s key finding is a change in global leadership. Data from the first five years

In fiscal year (FY) 2023, federal obligations for science and engineering (S&E) to universities and colleges totaled $49 billion—$29 billion more than FY 2000, and a 10% increase from the prior year. The growth is less rapid when adjusted for inflation (2017 USD), with just over $40 billion in real obligations in FY 2023, a 5% increase over the year prior and $12.6 billion (or 46%) increase over the FY 2000 value. Each year, approximately 90% of these federal obligations for higher education S&E are allotted to R&D activities, directly supporting key innovation activities nationwide.

This article uses data from The Survey of Federal Science and Engineering Support to Universities, Colleges, and Nonprofit Institutions—the sole source of comprehensive, institutional-level data on federal science and engineering funding to academia and nonprofits—to provide breakdowns of federal obligations for S&E to universities and colleges at the national and state levels.

Many SSTI members will attend the annual BIO International Convention, which will be held this year in Boston from June 16 to 19. There, they join a cohort of organizations with various connections to the life sciences, including contract research and manufacturing companies, academic centers, "big" pharma, "little" pharma, and foreign nations representing their life sciences efforts.