SSTI Digest

President Obama announced over $240M in new multi-sector commitments dedicated to STEM education and outreach, with an emphasis on underserved groups, at the 2015 White House Science Fair on Monday. With the new investments, the president’s “Education to Innovate” campaign, launched in November 2009, has now resulted in more than $1 billion in financial and in-kind support for STEM initiatives. 

The National Science Foundation (NSF) unveiled a framework to increase public access to scientific publications and digital scientific data funded by NSF grants. The plan, entitled Today’s Data, Tomorrow’s Discoveries, will require that NSF-funded research presented in peer-reviewed scholarly journals and papers in juried conference proceedings or transactions be deposited in a database within one year of publication for the public to download, read, and analyze. The author(s) also must make the meta-data available for download.  Read the announcement and plan…

Over the last couple months, the San Francisco-based Uber, a mobile-app-based transportation network, announced partnerships with institutions of higher education in the Northeast. In February, Uber and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) launched a strategic partnership that includes the launch of the Uber Advanced Technologies Center, a Pittsburgh-based research laboratory to advance Uber’s mission of bringing safe, reliable transportation to everyone, everywhere. The center will focus on the areas of mapping and vehicle safety and autonomy technology. The agreement also will include funding from Uber for faculty chairs and graduate fellowships at CMU.

In the recently released 50 State Project, CQ Roll Call provides an overview of the 45,564 bills and resolutions that were passed by state legislatures between the 2013 and 2014 legislative sessions. The report found the top issues covered by state legislatures during the timeframe were state budgets, education (including STEM and higher education), taxes, and transportation. Other important issues included job creation and energy-related issues. Job creation and economic revitalization were among the five most important legislative issues in nine states including Alaska, Arizona, Connecticut, Kentucky, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania,  and West Virginia. The study used survey data collected from reporters who cover state politics for each of the 50 states. Download the report…

Late last week, Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo’s released her proposed $8.6 billion FY2016 budget proposal.   The budget focuses on three guiding principles: building skills, attracting entrepreneurs and investment, and fostering innovation. Raimondo, who had previously served as the state’s treasurer and founded Rhode Island’s first venture capital fund, prioritized economic development and released a detailed jobs plan during her election campaign, much of which is reflected in the budget. With the goal of building skills, Raimondo’s budget proposes:

The White House announced plans to host its first ever Demo Day, a new initiative to empower a variety of entrepreneurs from around the country to launch and scale innovative companies. Unlike a private-sector demo day, where investors watch and react to the pitches of entrepreneurs, the White House Demo Day, to be held this summer, will highlight success stories from entrepreneurs across the country, with an emphasis on best practices for inclusive entrepreneurship. Minority entrepreneurs are the fastest growing entrepreneurial segment in the United States, growing four times faster than their non-minority-owned counterparts between 1997 and 2007, according to a blog post to publicize the event written by Jeff Zients, the Director of the National Economic Council, and Megan Smith, the U.S. Chief Technology Officer.

SBIR projects are less likely to fail if research teams are smaller, have more experience and include women investigators, according to a new working paper by Albert N. Link and Mike Wright. The authors also found that larger SBIR awards lower the chances that a project will be discontinued before completion. While the study focuses on projects supported through federal SBIR programs, the findings could have implications for other kinds of public R&D support.

Link and Wright reviewed data from 1,878 Phase II projects funded through the U.S. Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) programs at the Departments of Defense and Energy, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and NASA. Of those projects, about a third failed, meaning they were not completed and were discontinued by the research team. A variety of reasons were given for these failure. The most common (24 percent of cases) was that the potential market for the new technology was too small. Another 15 percent reported that insufficient funding was available to complete the project, and 14 percent said that technical problems stood in the way.

Massachusetts is disproportionately affected by federal immigration policy, according to a recent report from the Mass Technology Leadership Council (MassTLC) – Growing 100K Tech Jobs: Trends, Insights, and Opportunities within the 2020 Challenge. The authors contend that the state’s universities and colleges educate a significant number of highly skilled immigrants from around the world in tech fields only to see them leave after graduation. Many of these immigrants help create economic value in regions across the country and world by launching startups and stimulating job growth.

A primary cause of these international students leaving the state is national immigration policies that allow international companies to have advantage in competing for talent, according to the authors. MassTLC contends that the state and other groups within Massachusetts should continue to advocate for Congress to pass immigration reform. These findings were among several about how to reach the MassTLC goal of creating 100,000 new tech jobs from 2010 to 2020. Read the report…

The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) issued a Federal Funding Opportunity for nonprofit organizations to operate state MEP centers in 12 states – Alaska, Idaho, Illinois, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Utah, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin. The objective of the MEP Center program is to provide business and technical services to small- and medium-sized manufacturers within the state of operation. MEP will commit nearly $32 million annually for five years across the 12 states – an expected total of $158 million matched at least dollar-for-dollar by $158 million or more of non-federal funding. A public webinar for applications will be conducted on Monday, March 30th, at 2:00 pm ET. Applications are due June 1. Read the announcement…

In partnership with several major pharmaceutical companies, the United Kingdom’s (UK) Secretary of Health Jeremy Hunt announced the creation of the $100 million Dementia Discovery Fund. The UK government-led venture fund will support innovative research across the globe to help find new ways to prevent and treat dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Private sector partners that already have agreed to invest in the project include Biogen, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Lilly and Pfizer. One of the UK’s largest Alzheimer’s-focused foundations, Alzheimer’s Research UK, also will commit funding to support the development pioneering new drugs to treat the condition. Read the press release…

This week, the White House released details on its ninth planned institute within the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation. The Department of Defense will award $75 million for a new manufacturing hub focused on Revolutionary Fibers and Textiles. Regional manufacturers, universities and nonprofits will soon be invited to compete for the funds, which require a 1:1 cost share. The institute will be the sixth funded through the Defense Department. Three others have received support through the Department of Energy. Read details...

This week, the Obama administration launched TechHire, a new, multi-sector initiative that seeks to educate workers through universities, community colleges, high-quality online courses, and other nontraditional approaches like “coding bootcamps,” with many programs not requiring a four-year degree. To support the program, the administration and the Department of Labor are creating a $100 million H-1B grant competition that funds innovative approaches to training and employing low-skilled individuals with training barriers, such as those with child care responsibilities, disabilities, limited English proficiency, among others.  More than twenty communities throughout the country have committed to using data and innovative hiring practices to expand openness to non-traditional hiring, expand models for training that prepare students in a faster timeframe, and build local strategies and partnerships to better connect people to jobs as part of the TechHire initiative.