SSTI Digest

The 2026 SBIR/STTR reauthorization bill (S. 3971, the Small Business Innovation and Economic Security Act) has cleared Congress and is now awaiting final action by the President. The Senate passed the bill by unanimous consent on March 3, 2026. The House subsequently approved the Senate-passed measure on March 17, 2026, by a vote of 345–41. Because the House adopted the Senate version without amendment, the bill moved straight to enrollment, where the final official copy is prepared for signature before being sent to the White House.

As states look for ways to expand access to bachelor’s-level education while controlling costs and strengthening workforce pipelines, community college baccalaureate (CCB) programs have emerged as a promising policy tool. A recent NBER working paper by Riley Acton, Camila Morales, Kalena Cortes, Julia A. Turner and Lois Miller examines whether CCB programs deliver meaningful economic returns for graduates and how they compare to traditional degree pathways from four-year institutions. 

Discussions concerning the value of earning a bachelor's degree often center on the return on investment for the degree-holder. However, a recent article from Chicago Fed Insights illustrates that degree-holders, specifically their density in a community, also impacts whether or not their region will thrive in the coming decades.  

The authors, Ila Gupta and Thomas Walstrum, show that places with a higher share of bachelor-degree holders have greater employment growth fifty years later. They plotted the share of population that had a bachelor’s degree in 1970 against average annual employment growth rates from 1970 through 2023 in selected metro and micro areas and in U.S. states. They found that places with more of their population possessing bachelor’s degree in 1970 tended to grow faster over the subsequent 53 years. 

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont issued an executive order (No. 26-2) on April 2, establishing the Connecticut Career Pathways Commission, which is tasked with helping create a system that will connect students to jobs in high-demand fields. The commission will be made up of unpaid volunteers, with members from the education and business communities, as well as municipal and governmental leaders, legislators, community representatives, labor unions, and students. The commission will be led by former U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona. 

A new $123 million fund will work to recruit up to 45 chemistry researchers and their teams to Indiana universities over the next five years, betting on the premise that building research talent is a prerequisite for the state’s broader life sciences ambitions. “The researchers recruited through the fund will bring together an unmatched cluster of multi-disciplinary expertise to develop platform technologies necessary to enable the reshoring of life science manufacturing and work to tackle industry-informed grand challenges,” stated BioCrossroads’ CEO and President, Vince Wong.  

“We few, we happy few” shouldn’t have been so bloody few if Shakespeare’s Henry V were honest 400+ years ago. Flash forward, and a merry band of brothers and sisters represented the TBED community well as they visited DC’s Capitol Hill this week to remind Congressional offices of the importance of several federal programs for funding strategic regional innovation initiatives. And it was nothing like Henry V’s Battle of Agincourt. In truth, regional innovation is and always has been a nonpartisan issue, but there are other pressures afoot to capture Congress’s attention and purse strings. 

ARPA-H cancels relationships with ARPANet-H partners 

In a Feb. 20 email, ARPA-H announced the end of its contracts with Houston-based Customer Experience and Boston-based Investor Catalyst to manage the hub-and-spoke approach to connecting research institutions, investors, and the health industry market. The agency promised in its email, however, that it was retaining its hub-and-spoke structure for service delivery and would have offices in Dallas and Boston, yet still establishing “a more direct connection from you, the spokes, to the hubs and ARPA-H.”

DOE Science Office reorganized (again) 

The Central Indiana Corporate Partnership (CICP) is now doing business as the CEOs of Indiana Corporate Partnership. The CICP brand will soon feature the new identity, including marketing materials and a redesigned logo. The legal name, Central Indiana Corporate Partnership, will remain unchanged. 

New federal data shows that Case Western Reserve University is the nation’s fastest-growing top-tier research institution. This year, the university’s R&D spending surged 37.5%. It is opening a new $300 million science hub later this year. 

Regional innovation systems across the country can learn from the journeys of the EDA's designated Tech Hubs, regardless of your region’s competitive advantage. The twelve hubs continue to make progress, with consortia launching new programs and advancing key initiatives. The following highlights recent news from a selection of hubs. SSTI supports the Tech Hub community through its Technology-Based Economic Development Community of Practice. 

 

Mar 26, 2026 

On March 17, Indiana Gov. Mike Braun revealed a new tax credit initiative aimed at creating 100,000 high-wage agriculture and life sciences jobs over the next decade, with the Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC) committing $1 billion in tax credits toward those jobs. The initiative stems from an executive order from Braun last year directing Indiana’s 15 economic regions to submit formal growth plans to boost economies, per capita income, and educational attainment. To qualify for the credit, jobs will have to pay 125% of a county’s median annual wage. 

April 8, 2:00 p.m. EDT Free  

Two of the more influential and most deserving American academic researchers in university innovation policy are being recognized this year for their decades of contributions by a prestigious global award. SSTI is excited to host this special conversation with both recipients, names known well by many, to remind us all and to help make more of the TBED community aware of their important work.  

SSTI is pleased to host Albert N. Link and Donald S. Siegel, recipients of the 2026 Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research, for a discussion of their work on technology transfer and innovative entrepreneurship. 

Total research and experimental development (R&D) performed in the U.S. reached nearly $1 trillion of expenditures in 2024, reveals new data from the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES). This represents a 6% increase over the prior year, a 101% increase in the past 10 years, and a nearly 16,000% increase in the past 70 years.

Adjusted for inflation, total R&D expenditures, relative to their 2024 values, have increased more modestly but still reflect impressive growth: 3% since 2023; 56% in the 10 years since 2015; and approximately 1,670% in the 70 years since 1955.

Figure 1 below includes two line charts, each with a line for billions of current and constant (2017) USD: GDP on the left and R&D expenditures on the right. Periods of recession are highlighted in grey for applicable years. Note that each chart has a different y-axis.