SSTI Digest

While the recent Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) has some economists concerned that the U.S. economy is running out of qualified workers to fill existing openings, several states have announced workforce programs that are intended to address the skills-gap and build the talent pipeline in their respective states. These programs are intended to build regional partnerships between local workforce development agencies, economic development agencies, industry, and others. Approaches include a statewide apprenticeship tax credit in Alabama; occupation training for high-demand occupations in Texas; and, incumbent workforce training in Virginia.

The Department of Labor’s (DOL) Employment and Training Administration (ETA) released a federal funding opportunity (FFO) for the America’s Promise Job Driven Grant Program. Announced in May by Vice President Joe Biden, ETA will make up to 40 grants from approximately $100 million in available funding to provide individuals the opportunity to get high-quality, tuition-free education and training that leads to in-demand and industry-recognized credentials and degrees. The grants also will help support the development and growth of regional partnerships between workforce agencies, education, training providers and employers in a variety of industries such as information technology, healthcare, advanced manufacturing, financial services and educational services. Applications are due August 25. Read the FFO…

Despite increasing demand for life sciences research funding and larger budgets from Congress, access to the investigator research funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is getting harder, according to data released May 31 by Michael Lauer, NIH deputy director for Extramural Research.  R01 grants, the oldest and predominant funding mechanism NIH uses to distribute project-specific research grants, are becoming larger in size and more exclusive in who receives the grants. Recent statistics indicate dollars may be limited, in part, because they are going to fewer researchers in larger amounts.

Proponents for increasing appropriations for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and related federal agencies supporting life sciences research argue their case, in part, on statistics showing the unmet demand for funding as expressed by the number of unsuccessful proposals submitted to NIH each year. Most recently in 2015, 16.3 percent of de novo research grant applications were successful in their pursuit of NIF funding; the figure was as high as 27.1 percent in 2001.

In the lead-up to the Biotechnology Innovation Organization’s (BIO) International Convention held this week, the organization released a series of reports on the health of the industry. Collectively, the reports indicate that the bioscience industry is seeing greater employment with better wages, increasing venture investment, but university and federal funding, patent filings and clinical trial success are leveling off or decreasing.

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is continuing their campaign to add supporters to Innovation: An American Imperative. The initiative calls on Congress to take several actions, including to: a) increase basic research funding, b) increase funding for STEM programs, c) reform U.S. visa policy, d) streamline research regulations, e) reaffirm merit-based peer review, and f) support programs that accelerate manufacturing innovation and federal-industry-academic partnerships. More than 400 organizations have already signed on, including SSTI and many SSTI member organizations. The American Academy is targeting 100 new signatories by June 15: consider adding your organization to list. Read the announcement…

The Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation, best known for its “genius grant” fellowships that finance creative endeavors, announced on June 2 a new grant competition called “100&Change.” The $100 million grant will be awarded to a single proposal that contributes to “solving society’s most pressing problems.”  Unlike other competitions, such as XPRIZE moonshots, the foundation is not defining what societal challenge or issue it wants to address, but instead it has purposefully created 100&Change to challenge the notion that foundation grants tend to be too small for solving such problems, and to create “another space” with the award that will cover institutional blind spots and address a common problem in funding – obtaining money to take a good, proven idea that is either unnoticed or under-resourced and scale it up.

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SSTI has released the online version of the 2016 SSTI Excellence in TBED Awards Program. Available at sstiawards.org, the online version of the awards brochure will highlight changes to the awards program including the categories for 2016:

Most Promising TBED Initiative Building Prosperity Through Science & Technology Creating Prosperity Through Entrepreneurship & Capital Enhancing Prosperity Through Competitive Industries Increasing Prosperity Through Economic Opportunity

The brochure also includes:

The Delta Regional Authority  (DRA) released the Regional Development Plan III (RDPIII) – an economic development strategy to help guide DRA’s 252-county region’s economic growth over the next five years. In RDPIII, DRA identifies three goals and related action items to guide its economic development efforts in the Delta region:

In an effort to prepare students for post-secondary education that meets the needs of key state industries, Iowa Gov. Terry Brandstad signed  HF 2392 into law on May 26. The new law will attempt to modernize Iowa’s career technical education system as well as increase the number of Iowans with a post-secondary education by helping eighth-grade students develop career and academic plans with an emphasis on work-based training; establishing regional partnerships to help schools provide career technical education; and, expanding career technical education to include new areas in key state industries.

As the 2015-2016 academic calendar comes to an end, several universities announced large financial contributions from foundations to address large societal issues including cancer and a variety of neurological disorders.  These large-scale initiatives will be undertaken at universities in California, Indiana, New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas. The Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI) also announced the launch of its SPARK program, an online research initiative designed to become the largest autism study ever undertaken in the United States.

Newly released research from the Kauffman Foundation finds that in 2016, Washington, D.C., Austin, San Jose, Columbus, and Nashville were the five highest ranked metropolitan areas for the Index of Growth Entrepreneurship. The five highest ranked states were Virginia, Utah, Maryland, Arizona, and Massachusetts. As described in the SSTI Digest last week, The Kauffman Index of Growth Entrepreneurship measures the growth of entrepreneurial businesses in the United States, complementing the foundation’s recently released Index of Startup Activity and Index of Main Street Entrepreneurship.

Ten Connecticut startups competed in a $10,000 pitch competition at CTNext last week, but the five-year-old state initiative finds itself the winner of a much higher-stakes appraisal. Gov. Dannel Malloy approved the FY 2017 state budget bill on June 2, which will make CTNext an independent organization with $67 million in bonding support. Among the powers assigned to the organization are managing an innovation-places program and maintaining a crowdfunding website, in addition to a broad array of activities geared toward promoting tech-based economic development in Connecticut.