SSTI Digest

NSF has released data on nearly 300 letters of intent (LOIs) submitted to the NSF Regional Innovation Engines program by lead organization applicants. The data is meant to enable applicant teams to connect and potentially collaborate before the preliminary proposal deadline on Aug. 6, 2024, according to a press release from NSF.

The data can be found on the NSF Engines' Letter of Intent Explorer, which offers an interactive map showing the location of lead organizations and the industry sectors from which the LOIs came, a search engine for finding lead organizations by state, a data table showing LOI titles, lead organizations names, types, and contact information, and region of service.

The explorer indicates that

The Economic Development Administration’s (EDA) Regional Technology and Innovation Hubs (Tech Hubs) and National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Regional Innovation Engines (Engines) programs require regions to advance a critical technology area that already has traction in their region. However, identifying such critical technologies might be challenging as applicants face deadlines, such as the August 6, 2024, NSF Engines preliminary proposal deadline and the subsequent February 11, 2025, full proposal deadline. Fortunately, SSTI recently updated a data tool comprised of two interactive visuals and a downloadable data file that can assist in identifying the critical technologies in an applicant’s geographic location.

The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Directorate for Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP) has released a new pilot map with data on over 3,300 awards nationwide managed by TIP starting from fiscal year 2023. The directorate, according to its press release, hopes to transform the pilot into a “one-stop hub to find one another, facilitate partnerships, and build regional coalitions and innovation ecosystems” by adding additional data and features over time.

With the current pilot, award data can be viewed by either key technology area or TIP program and filtered by the other. Data can be further filtered by year, Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) status, and by whether awards are still active within the selected fiscal year(s).

The U.S. Department of Commerce recently issued a Notice of Intent (NOI) to open a competition for new research and development (R&D) activities to accelerate domestic capacity for semiconductor advanced packaging.​ As part of CHIPS for America, the National Advanced Packaging Manufacturing Program plans to invest up to $1.6 billion to fund innovation in five R&D areas related to semiconductor advanced packaging. ​

The program anticipates making several awards of approximately $150 million in each research area. ​Private sector investments from industry and academia are expected. ​The five R&D areas are

• Equipment, tools, processes, and process integration
• Power delivery and thermal management
• Connector technology, including photonics and radio frequency (RF)
• Chiplets ecosystem (small, modular integrated circuits that perform specific functions)
• Co-design/electronic design automation (EDA). 

The funding opportunity is also expected to include opportunities for prototype developments.

Natcast, the nonprofit entity that operates the National Semiconductor Technology Center (NSTC) Consortium, recently launched the NSTC Workforce Partner Alliance (WFPA) program. ​The program seeks to address workforce challenges in the U.S. semiconductor industry by supporting projects that close skills and labor market gaps for researchers, engineers, and technicians in semiconductor design, manufacturing, and production. ​The WFPA will fund between four and ten projects with budgets between $500,000 to $2 million per award. While not required, proposals that include complementary funding or leverage public resources will receive strong preference.

Natcast seeks proposals that support

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) recently announced plans to launch a 7(a) Working Capital Pilot (WCP) Program later this year. The program will offer a lines of credit, made by 7(a) lenders and backed by the SBA. It is designed to give greater flexibility than a traditional term loan. This pilot program, according to an SBA press release, will include both a “transaction-based” and “asset-based” model, allowing borrowers to leverage sales or assets to access working capital. Depending on the details of the capital structure that are revealed when the program launches, these models may enable both newer technology companies that have sales but few assets and legacy companies that have assets but insufficient cashflow to invest in new technologies with the opportunity to access financing through SBA’s popular 7(a) vehicle.

House Committee on Energy and Commerce Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers recently published Reforming the National Institutes of Health: Framework for Discussion. The blueprint calls for reducing the number of NIH institutes and centers (ICs) from 27 to 15, largely by merging some of them. The reorganization and proposed funding levels are illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Proposed reorganization and proposed funding levels for NIH restructuring. Click on the solid bar to the left of the current CIs to view the destination of the CIs. Click on the solid bar to the right of the proposed CIs to view the CI(s) that will be consolidated into it. Click in the center of the horizontal bar to see the proposed change in funding after the restructuring.

Note: This brief quasi-book review/book synopsis is the first item in an experimental new section of SSTI’s newsletter, potentially joining other regular sections such as Useful Stats, Fed/Leg News, State News, Member Updates, and Recent Research. Its periodic continuation after the contributions we present over the summer will depend on feedback from our members and Digest readers. Comments may be shared with skinner @ ssti.org

Ethan Mollick, a Wharton professor specializing in entrepreneurship and innovation, knows people are thinking a lot about generative artificial intelligence (AI). He recognizes many are worried, as his introductory chapter “Three Sleepless Nights” of his book, Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI, reveals. Mollick’s opening sentence tells readers those 72 hours are the minimum price he thinks anyone will pay for “really getting to know AI.”

Yet another doom and gloom book about the everything-changing platform technology? Not at all.

The Economic Development Administration today announced $504 million in funding across 12 Tech Hubs, the culmination of a 14-month selection process to choose the first regions funded for implementation projects under the program. The 12 Hubs receiving implementation awards are listed in the graphic below.

EDA originally projected making 5-10 implementation awards $50-75 million each. The agency is instead making 12 awards at $19-51 million.

The Tech Hubs program was authorized by Congress to bolster America’s national security and economic competitiveness in 2022’s CHIPS and Science Act. While authorized at $10 billion, the program received its initial funding of $500 million with the FY 2023 omnibus, and Congress provided an additional $41 million in FY 2024. 
Today’s announcement, which builds upon EDA’s award in October 2023 of strategy development grants, therefore accounts for nearly all the agency’s appropriated funds, pending further congressional action. 

The Small Business Administration recently released a new solicitation for the Regional Innovation Clusters initiative. Unlike what SBA has done in recent years, and returning to the program’s roots, all nonprofit organizations are eligible to apply alongside for-profit firms. In a change from prior solicitations, proposals must include whether the work will support an emerging or mature cluster. The timeline is relatively tight: submissions are due July 26.

In recent years, SBA has only allowed for-profit firms to compete for the awards, despite universities and regional nonprofits having successfully managed cluster organizations since the initiative first launched. This solicitation marks a return to allowing nonprofit and for-profit entities to compete. Restoring the program eligibility has been a priority for the SSTI Innovation Advocacy Council, which also had advocated for growing the program from just $5 million in FY 2020.

Editor's Note: This article was updated on July 1 to reflect an amendment during the full House's consideration of the FY 2025 defense appropriations bill that restored the APEX accelerators program to its FY 2024 funding level.

Nearly one out of every four workers in the United States is now involved in a STEM occupation, and 41 percent of those STEM workers do not have an associate’s degree or higher, according to data presented in the latest NSF Science & Engineering Indicator report, The STEM Labor Force: Scientists, Engineers, and Skilled Technical Workers.  

The NSF S&E indicator report provides policy-relevant details about the representation of demographic groups in STEM, the STEM labor market's earnings, occupations, and industries, the geographic distribution of the STEM workforce, the degree attainment and training of workers in STEM, and foreign-born workers.