Secretary Raimondo and Director Panchanathan provide update on regional innovation programs

Last week, a Senate committee heard Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and National Science Foundation Director Sethuraman Panchanathan discuss CHIPS & Science Act program implementation (similar to a September hearing in the House). Both agency leaders affirmed rapid progress toward making funding announcements on major programs and reminded the committee that more funding is needed to meet the vision Congress defined in its legislation.

Several notable statements that Raimondo made about Tech Hubs to the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation included the following (all quotations per the transcript provided by C-SPAN):

• Tech Hubs Phase I awards will be made “This fall. As soon as possible,” and later, “I hope Tech Hubs will be in the coming weeks.”
• On the subject of the number of awards that will be made: Commerce “will do a minimum of 20 Tech Hubs, and possibly more.” However, the department will “only be able to make maybe five or six sizable grants.”
• Each of the 20 Tech Hubs is “probably worthy of maybe $100 million.”
• “Every bit of the $10 billion [authorization] we could put to work to stimulate high-quality tech hubs.”

Panchanathan affirmed that the final Regional Innovation Engines announcement is expected by the end of the calendar year.