SSTI Digest

Pointing to the growth potential in jobs and health within the life sciences industry sector, Gov. Jay Inslee vetoed a $20 million cut in funding to the nine-year-old Life Sciences Discovery Fund (LSDF), allowing the fund to honor existing commitments and proceed with the 2013-14 Proof of Concept grant program and Entrepreneur Mentoring grant program. The state’s budget director David Schumacher said the sheer volume of letters from biotech companies in support of saving the fund carried weight in the governor’s decision, reports The Olympian.

LSDF invests monies from the Master Tobacco Settlement Agreement in R&D that demonstrates the strongest potential for delivering health and economic returns to the state.

Moving forward, John Des Rosier, executive director of the fund, said the group has been engaged in a strategic planning process to diversify funding for future years and the recent legislative session has prompted them to act with more urgency. LSDF’s tobacco settlement funding is scheduled to run out in 2017.

Maria Contreras-Sweet has been confirmed as the administrator of the Small Business Administration.

Larry Ferguson has been chosen as the vice chancellor for economic development and workforce solutions at Kentucky Community College and Technical System.

Rebecca Lovell has been selected as the startup liaison for the City of Seattle’s Office of Economic Development.

A limited number of printed original copies of Innovation U 2.0 are available. The publication identifies the 12 best practice universities at generating economic impact from their intellectual capital. SSTI wants to share them with our community and will randomly select FIVE winners from our Facebook fans. Hurry! Winners will be announced on Facebook Friday, April 11. https://www.facebook.com/ssti.org

Together, New York and the Mid-Atlantic region were home to as much angel investment activity as California, according to the 2013 Year in Review edition of the HALO Report, published by Silicon Valley Bank and the Angel Resource Institute. Last year, California continued its reign as the top single region for angel activity, with 18.6 percent of U.S. deals and 19.6 percent of dollars. For the first time however, the combined activity of New York and the other Mid-Atlantic states reached levels similar to California, with 18.6 percent of deals and 19.7 percent of dollars. Activity dipped in New England, the Southeast and the Northwest. Combined activity in the Internet, Healthcare and Mobile & Telecom sectors represented more than three-quarters of all angel deals.

Groups in the greater Detroit and Pittsburgh regions recently released reports documenting the progress these metros have made over the past few years in building thriving technology economies. Detroit’s Automation Alley found that tech industry employment in the region grew by 15 percent in 2011, outpacing growth in all of the other 14 regions used as benchmarks in the study. A report on Pittsburgh’s investment economy, conducted by Ernst & Young LLP and Innovation Works, shows the region to have grown its per capita venture capital investment levels by 34.6 percent during the 2009-2013 period.

Many of the proposals put forth by Gov. Andrew Cuomo for growing New York’s innovation economy were fulfilled or received ongoing support in the enacted FY15 budget. This includes a final installment of $680 million to complete the Buffalo Billion initiative, new rounds of funding for the Regional Economic Development Councils, SUNY and CUNY challenge grants, and tax breaks for manufacturers. Lawmakers also approved funding for a new genomic medicine network and STEM scholarship program.

Highlights of funding for new initiatives within the enacted budget are outlined below:

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel recently announced the Chicago Anchors for a Strong Economy (CASE) program — an initiative to connect local small- and medium-sized business to a network of Chicago’s leading anchor institutions (e.g., hospitals, universities, cultural institutions, corporations). The CASE program is intended to create economic opportunities for local suppliers across all industries, including science and tech companies, by fostering strategic relationships with anchor institutions and equipping them with the necessary tools to successfully compete for contracts with these anchor institutions. A pilot program between the University of Chicago and 10 local companies has been operating since mid-2013 as a proof-of-concept for the city-wide program.  

SSTI Excellence in TBED award winners produce real results that are changing the landscape of their communities, expanding infrastructure to grow high-tech sectors and improving the competitiveness of their regions. Their efforts haven’t gone unnoticed in the broader innovation community. Over the past couple of months, award winners have grabbed headlines – and funding – for their impressive work. U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker stopped by Clemson University’s Center for Automotive Research to tout its success in workforce development. In St. Louis, Monsanto recently awarded $2.5 million to BioSTL to support bioscience startups and, in Arizona, a $1 million grant will help fund ASU accelerator programs.

Commerce Secretary Touts CU-ICAR Model

In response to declining appropriations and the termination of the Space Shuttle program, NASA has had to re-orient its approach to commercial partnerships. Over the past decade, NASA has turned to private partnerships to further the agency’s goals of space research and exploration. This same impulse has driven NASA to create regional partnerships to cultivate private space industry clusters and drive the development of the Commercial Crew program, which is highlighted as a core component of the agency’s FY15 budget proposal. These efforts have changed NASA’s role in regional, high-tech economic development from that of a research laboratory to a direct partner.

In his FY15 budget, President Obama proposed a sweeping, multi-agency push for new research and improved infrastructure to combat the effects of global climate change. The largest piece of the president’s climate effort is a $1 billion Climate Resistance Fund, intended to fund climate-change preparedness at the federal, state and local level. Though the budget has not found much support in Congress, the administration has begun moving forward with other parts of the climate strategy, launching a Climate Data Initiative to make potentially valuable climate data available to entrepreneurs developing climate-related products.

After the last American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) obligations ran out in FY10, federal obligations for science and engineering at U.S. universities and colleges fell by 11 percent, according to the National Science Foundation (NSF).  Between FY2010-11, federal agency obligations fell by $31.4 billion in current dollars, though excluding ARRA funds, obligations actually rose by $1.2 billion. R&D obligations fell 10.6 percent, a decline that had its largest impact on funding for R&D-related equipment, facilities and land. Read the report…

External validation through an Excellence in TBED award certifies the superior quality of your initiative, lending independent credentials to your program as stakeholders and funders consider future investments. SSTI’s open call for applications for the 2014 awards program is April 16. Share with us the important work you are doing to support regional economies through efforts to: expand and commercialize research, increase access to capital, build entrepreneurial capacity, and improve the competitiveness of existing industries. We’ll also recognize a newer initiative for a creative approach in design or implementation. Learn more: http://www.sstiawards.org/.