Search

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has released the 2005 statistics for science and engineering (S&E) doctorate awards. Science and Engineering Doctorate Awards: 2005 details trends in doctorate awards by S&E field and recipient characteristics, institutions awarding doctorates, and postgraduation plans of recipients.



Using NSF and U.S. Census Bureau data, SSTI has prepared a table providing state ranking for doctorate awards by major field and state rankings for the total S&E doctorates awarded per 100,000 residents. The top five states in 2005 for total S&E doctorates awarded per 100,000 residents are the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Delaware and Maryland.



SSTI's table is available at: http://www.ssti.org/Digest/Tables/010807t.htm



NSF’s Science and Engineering Doctorate Awards: 2005 is available at: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf07305/



U.S. Census Bureau population data is available at: http://www.census.gov/popest/states/NST-ann-est.html



SSTI’s previously published S&E doctorate awards tables:

Last Tuesday's elections resulted in the selection of 11 new governors across the country, and could lead to important changes for TBED communities in many states. Six races resulted in a change of party affiliation in the top state position, including races in Arkansas, Colorado, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York and Ohio. All six governorships changed from Republican to Democratic administrations. This is the first time in 12 years that a majority of governors have been Democrats.

 

Incumbents won gubernatorial races in 25 states, and 14 governors did not face re-election this year.

 

But what changes are in store for the states with new leadership? Several of the governors-elect made economic development and TBED a part of their platforms throughout their candidacy. Here is a sampling of policies and programs announced by some of the governors-elect on their official websites as collected by SSTI:

 

Arkansas

Attorney General Mike Beebe (D) has proposed developing a series of regional community partnerships across the state to promote economic growth. Existing community partnerships in the state, the governor-elect says, have been successful in recruiting new employers by marketing regional assets and collaborating on infrastructure improvements. The incoming administration will favor communities that have demonstrated a commitment to regionalism when considering discretionary incentives and infrastructure funding. Beebe has also pledged to help find private partners to collaborate on biotech research conducted within the Arkansas University system.

 

Colorado

Denver District Attorney Bill Ritter (D) has a similar plan to implement regional development strategies in Colorado. His administration will establish State and Regional Economic Development Offices to conduct county research and analysis, recruit new businesses, and develop recruitment and information packages for new and existing businesses. Ritter has also released his New Energy Economy plan, which calls for the promotion of wind, solar, and biofuel industries to benefit rural areas, and for the creation of the Colorado Clean Energy Fund to provide seed money for alternative energy companies.

 

Iowa

Clean energy also will be a priority in Iowa, where Secretary of State Chet Culver (D) has proposed a $100 million Iowa Power Fund to support businesses attempting to enter the clean energy industry. Culver also favors a small public venture fund ($20 million to $25 million annually) to provide venture capital in underserved areas of the state. Entrepreneurial support will be available through a new Office of Small Business Development and Entrepreneurship, which will serve as a one-stop shop for training, advice and advocacy. Culver supports a repeal of the state's ban on stem cell research and will provide at least $10 million in funding for the Iowa Center for Regenerative Medicine in Iowa City to leverage life science growth and investment.

 

Florida

Attorney General Charlie Crist (R) has promised to develop the state's science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) programs as engines of high-tech growth. His administration will offer additional research funding to universities that focus or increase their focus on STEM education and research. Crist also plans to encourage public-private partnerships to implement the Sure Futures program, which would match businesses with students seeking advanced STEM degrees and offer employers a tax credit for hiring those graduates to work in the state.

 

Massachusetts

In Massachusetts, attorney and businessman Deval Patrick (D) plans to focus the state's investment in high-tech businesses on areas that have not benefited from recent growth along Route 128. State funds for start-up businesses will offer more favorable terms of repayment based on the number of jobs created by the new firm. New businesses that create new jobs in distressed areas of the state will owe substantially less. Patrick's administration also will issue bonds to invest in the expansion and development of facilities and new faculty at public universities to promote stem cell research and biotech commercialization.

 

New York

Applied research in New York may receive a boost from Attorney General Eliot Spitzers (D) planned New York State Innovation Fund. This program, if funded by a voter-approve bond act, would support research with a direct commercial application. The fund would support research with direct commercial applications, which the governor-elect says has been ignored by the state's Centers of Excellence.

The Louisiana Recovery Authority and the Louisiana Board of Regents recently unveiled a $28.5 million Research Commercialization and Educational Enhancement Program to stimulate economic development within the portions of the state severely impacted by Hurricanes Rita and Katrina. Funds for this program originate from the Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) appropriated by the federal government.

 

State officials report how Louisiana suffered $400 million in damage to research facilities and infrastructure after the hurricanes. Furthermore, officials report the aggressive recruitment of key research faculty by out-of-state institutions as another threat to future development and economic recovery. While Louisiana had a strong pre-hurricane research capacity, it lacked a coordinated and focused strategy to drive new company creation, market development, and marketing opportunities, according to an action plan developed by the state.

 

The highlights of the RC/EEP program include the following components:

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a total of $76 million over the next five years to fund multi-university collaborations to support four cross-disciplinary centers to address fundamental questions in the areas of next-generation polymers, climate modeling, microbial oceanography and coastal environments.



With the new awards, NSF currently supports 17 Science and Technology Centers that involve nearly 100 academic institutions, national laboratories, industrial organizations or other entities. The centers build intellectual and physical infrastructures within and between disciplines, and bring together the creation, integration, and transfer of new knowledge to the mainstream and industrial communities.



Centers offer the research and engineering community an effective mechanism to undertake long-term scientific and technological research and education activities, to explore better and more effective ways to educate students and to develop mechanisms to ensure the timely transition of research and education advances into service in society.



Each center receives roughly $19 million over five years, and if approved, receives an additional five years of support following a thorough evaluation.



The new centers are described below.



The NSF Science and Technology Center for Layered Polymeric Systems, headquartered at Case Western Reserve University, will conduct research at the intersection between the physical sciences and polymer science and engineering. The research will center on a layering process created at Case Western that imparts features on the micro- and nanoscales. The forced-assembly process can combine otherwise incompatible polymers and other materials to produce hierarchical structures.



The center also involves partners at the University of Texas at Austin, Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn., the Cleveland Municipal School District, the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Miss., Ohio Northern University in Ada, Ohio, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute, Ind., the State University of New York at Fredonia, the Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, N.Y., and the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C.



The NSF Science and Technology Center for Multi-Scale Modeling of Atmospheric Processes, headquartered at Colorado State University, will create improved climate models for more accurately depicting cloud processes and enhancing climate and weather forecasting.



The prototype model allows scientists to take a two-dimensional model of a collection of clouds and apply the behavior of those clouds to each of the thousands of grid columns of a global atmospheric model.



The center also involves partners at the San Diego Supercomputer Center at the University of California, San Diego, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., in addition to other investigators and educators around the country and in Canada, Japan, England and Australia.



Headquartered at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, the NSF Science and Technology Center for Microbial Oceanography: Research and Education, will facilitate collaborations among the disparate disciplines of oceanography, microbiology, ecology and genomics.



Researchers will pursue a deeper understanding of the oceans and how they respond to global environmental variability and climate change and the biology, ecology and biogeochemistry of marine microorganisms, including bacteria, archaea, single-celled plants and viruses.



The center also involves partners at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Oregon State University, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, the University of California at Santa Cruz and the Hawai'i Department of Education.



The final new center is the NSF Science and Technology Center for Coastal Margin Observation and Prediction. Headquartered at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, the center will use advances in genomics and proteomics to study coastal margins. Coastal margins comprise less than 20 percent of the contiguous U.S. but support more than half of the U.S. population.



The effort will involve SATURN, a space-age river and ocean observation network that includes boats, buoys, stationary platforms, undersea ocean gliders and even unmanned, bottom-crawling vehicles to continuously collect real-time data on water temperature, salinity, levels of oxygen and organic compounds, presence of microbial communities and other factors.



Scientists will use the data to build computer models and simulations for determining climate change impacts on coastal margins, the roles coastal margins play in the global cycling of environmental carbon, nutrients, gases and other manmade and natural substances, and how far seaward human activities affect ecosystems.



The center also involves partners at the University of Washington, Oregon State University, Portland State University, the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and the University of Utah.

Synthetic biology, quality of life technologies, fluid power, mid-infrared technologies, and structured organic composites are the five technology areas supported through the new Engineering Research Centers (ERCs) awards announced by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The centers will share $75.3 million to develop cross-disciplinary research programs advancing technologies that address major societal problems and provide the basis for new industries.



For more than two decades, the ERC program has fostered interdisciplinary research and education collaborations, in close partnership with industry, based on the realities of technological innovation and the development of new products and services. States often incorporate ERCs and state-sponsored university-industry research centers into their tech-based economic development strategies. In each center, scientists and engineers from a variety of disciplines collaborate on broad-based high-risk engineering research, developing fundamental engineering knowledge and test beds for important emerging technologies.



NSF supports ERCs for up to 10 years while the centers develop a strong network of collaborations with industry leaders and a base of financial support that can sustain the centers after graduating from the NSF program. With the new awards, NSF supports a total of 22 ERCs in the fields of bioengineering; earthquake engineering; design, manufacturing and processing systems; microelectronic and optical systems and information technology.



Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center (SynBERC)

SynBERC will focus on synthetic biology, fabricating new biological components and assembling them into integrated, miniature devices and systems such as microbial drug factories or tools for seeking out and destroying cancerous tumors, pollutants or airborne warfare agents.



SynBERC is based at the University of California at Berkeley, in partnership with Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Prairie View A&M University, and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). The ERC will also partner with the University of California Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) and the California Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) at Berkeley and UCSF to increase involvement of underrepresented minority students in the field.



The ERC has industry partners that include 12 firms committed to membership and representing suppliers of genetic tools and custom DNA components, pharmaceutical and chemical firms, and firms interested in developing simulation software and computational tools. Venture capital firms will advise SynBERC on start-up business opportunities.



Quality of Life Technology Engineering Research Center (QoLT)

QoLT will develop a range of technologies that will allow people with limited mobility or other physical and mental restrictions to live more independent and productive lives. Working in design partnerships with older adults, people with disabilities and their care providers, the ERC will target new technologies to advance machine perception, intelligent robotics and miniaturization to craft devices ranging from wearable health monitors for older people to novel "intelligent" home systems that allow people with restricting disabilities to operate household appliances or drive a car.



QoLT is based at Carnegie Mellon University with the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) as its core partner. Through this partnership, the center engages faculty from Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute, and the H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy & Management, along with the Pitt Center of Assistive Technology in the Department of Rehabilitation Science and Technology, Pitt's Human Engineering Research Laboratories at Highland Drive VA Medical Center, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and several residential and institutional facilities for older adults and people with disabilities. To increase the diversity of engineers and scientists engaged in this field, the ERC will partner with the Florida/Georgia LSAMP, Chatham College, Howard University and Lincoln University.



Industry partners include 18 companies representing various fields, including robotics, medical devices, consumer electronics, information technology and assistive technology.



Engineering Research Center for Compact and Efficient Fluid Power (CEFP)

CEFP will develop compact, low cost next-generation, fluid-powered devices -- systems that use pressurized liquids or gases to transmit power. Researchers intend to develop a range of new technologies, such as hybrid vehicles with efficient fluid power components and wearable fluid-power assisted devices that run for extended periods without external energy sources -- ideal mobility aids for people with disabilities or power sources for compact machines such as rescue robots.



CEFP is based at University of Minnesota in partnership with the Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Purdue University and Vanderbilt University. Outreach universities include the Milwaukee School of Engineering and North Carolina A&T State University (NCAT). Outreach institutions include the National Fluid Power Association, Project Lead the Way, and the Science Museum of Minnesota. The ERC will form partnerships with the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Partnership (LSAMP) headquartered at NCAT, the Tennessee LSAMP headquartered at Tennessee State University, and the AGEP headquartered at the Georgia Institute of Technology.



Industry partners will augment NSF funding with $3 million. With help from the National Fluid Power Association, more than 50 companies have agreed to provide support for the research center.



Mid-Infrared Technologies for Health and the Environment (MIRTHE)

MIRTHE researchers will develop technologies that use mid-infrared quantum cascade lasers as the backbone for a wide range of next-generation air-monitoring sensors. Mid-infrared light reveals the presence of key gas molecules - such as carbon dioxide, ammonia, methane, and benzene - to specialized sensors. Such sensors have the potential to be accurate, extremely compact, affordable and easy for non-specialists to operate.



MIRTHE is based at Princeton University in partnership with Johns Hopkins University, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), Rice University, Texas A&M University and the City College of New York.



The center is collaborating with dozens of industrial partners and several educational outreach partners, including the Meyerhoff Scholars Program, a competitive program at UMBC that challenges gifted, underrepresented minority students to become leading research scientists and engineers, the UMBC and Rice University AGEPs, LSAMPs, Graduate Teaching Fellows in K-12 Education and others.



Engineering Research Center for Structured Organic Composites (C-SOC)

C-SOC will study the nature of finely ground granular materials and other substances that form the core of drug tablets, processed foods, agricultural chemicals and other "composite organic" products. In addition to improving the quality and consistency of such materials, the center will develop more consistent and cost-effective manufacturing techniques than methods based largely on trial and error.



C-SOC is based at Rutgers University in partnership with the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Purdue University and the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez. Outreach partners include the City University of New York (CUNY) AGEP; the Midwest Crossroads AGEP; the University of Puerto Rico AGEP; and the Indiana, Puerto Rico, and CUNY/NYC LSAMPs. Pre-college outreach programs include high schools near the partner universities in New Jersey, Indiana, and Puerto Rico and a vocational high school in Puerto Rico.



Industry partners include 28 companies that are providing a total of $2.5 million in research funding in the first year. They include pharmaceutical and food manufacturers along with suppliers of manufacturing and analytical equipment.



More information on the NSF Engineering Research Center program is available at http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5502 or through the ERC Association at http://www.erc-assoc.org.

Louisiana State University appointed Brooks Keel as its new vice chancellor for research and economic development.

Phil Bond will become president and CEO of the Information Technology Association of America in August. Bond formerly was undersecretary for technology in the U.S. Department of Commerce.

The Northern Virginia Technology Council Foundation has changed its name to the Equal Footing Foundation to better communicate its mission to the community.

Yolanda Hunter is the new manager of the New River Valley Competitiveness Center in Radford, Va. Wayne Carpenter, former manager of the incubator, left to pursue private consulting work.

Past SSTI conference sponsor ANGLE Technology Group named Mark DeSantis to serve as managing director of consulting and management and Lisa Smith to become vice president of marketing.

Using statistics from the National Science Foundation’s report Science & Engineering Indicators 2006, SSTI has prepared a table presenting 2003 state rankings for industrial R&D intensity - the ratio of industry R&D to gross state product (GSP).

Universities play a central role in supporting regional technology-based economic development and only one small federal grant program focuses each funding cycle toward new models for improving university-centered collaborative innovation strategies. The Partnership for Innovations (PFI) Program within the National Science Foundation (NSF) opened a new round of competition last week, offering funding of up to $600,000 for 10-15 successful proposals.