Analysis Finds Massachusetts R&D Leadership Threatened

A new report from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative (MTC) finds the federal government’s expanding investment in Homeland Security-related research is already proving a major boon to the high tech economy in Massachusetts, but the state’s overall leadership in federally-funded research and development (R&D) is under intensifying pressure from states throughout the country.

The MTC report tracks $3.3 billion in new federal funding for Homeland Security R&D to key industry clusters in Massachusetts and finds the most significant opportunities lie in the life sciences. Recent major grants (e.g. BU National Biocontainment Laboratory and the Harvard Medical School Regional Center of Excellence for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases Research) will strengthen the region’s existing assets in fields related to bio-terrorism defense and the detection, prevention and cure of infectious disease.

That's some of the good news in The R&D Funding Scorecard: Federal Investments and the Massachusetts Innovation Economy. MTC's findings also flag a few challenging trends for the state, including:

• Growth in funding to universities and colleges in Massachusetts was less than two-thirds that of the nation as a whole between FY95 and FY00, placing Massachusetts last among the leading technology states and 45th among the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The leading technology states are defined as those having economies comparable to Massachusetts, including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Jersey and New York.
• Massachusetts has benefited significantly from the doubling of R&D funding from the National Institutes of Health. However, NIH funding to Massachusetts universities and colleges grew at less than 80 percent of the national rate.
• Despite a substantial increase in National Institutes of Health funding in recent years, the state’s share of NIH funding in the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program has fallen from 25 percent to 15 percent. California-based firms have moved ahead of Massachusetts, particularly in Phase II SBIR funding. Phase II funds are awarded to small technology firms working on projects with a high potential for commercialization.

Written by Robert Kispert, the report provides one of the nation's most detailed analyses of the federal R&D investment at the single state level. Copies are available at: http://www.masstech.org/innovationoutlook/Federal.pdf