SSTI Digest

Listen to SSTI's Interview with Dave McNamara of SCLaunch SSTI has an effective new learning tool for TBED policymakers and practitioners seeking guidance in approaches to building and sustaining tech-based economies. Through exclusive interviews with Excellence in TBED Award recipients, find out first-hand how these award winning initiatives successfully responded to a critical need by applying innovative approaches to generate substantial economic gains for their region. SCLaunch 2008 Winner for the Building Entrepreneurial Capacity category Listen to a six-minute clip of SSTI's interview with South Carolina Research Authority Senior Vice President and SCLaunch Director Dave McNamara. A program of SCRA, SCLaunch was created to facilitate applied research, product development and commercialization programs, and to strengthen South Carolina's Knowledge Economy by creating high wage-…

To help the United Kingdom out of the recession, Alistair Darling, chancellor for the exchequer for the United Kingdom, outlined several significant TBED priorities in his budget address to the House of Commons last month. Top among them is a £750 Million ($1 Billion USD) Strategic Investment Fund that "will provide financial support, focusing on emerging technologies and regionally important sectors in, for example, advanced manufacturing, digital and biotechnology," Darling said in his address. This includes an additional £50 million for the Technology Strategy Board and £10 million for UK Trade and Investment. Fully one third of the new funds, £250 million, will be earmarked for low carbon investments. The Technology Strategy Board manages a £1 billion portfolio of TBED programs, including university-business collaborative research grants, a series of knowledge transfer networks for technology transfer, and research centers.   The Board has not announced how the new funding will be distributed. Also launched at the end of April is the new £100 million Small Business Research Initiative, a…

Iowa legislators adjourned the 2009 session last week after voting in favor of Gov. Chet Culver's multi-million dollar I-JOBS initiative, providing $35 million for broadband access and alternative energy projects. The compromise plan approved by lawmakers allocates $715 million for investments in infrastructure, jobs, the environment, and flood relief through the issuance of bonds paid for with gaming revenue and existing tax revenues, according to the governor's office. To improve the state's telecommunications infrastructure, $25 million will be leveraged with up to $500 million in federal funding for improved broadband access. The goal is to put in place a system worth about $1 billion when combined with private investments to replace the current system of low- and high-speed connections scattered throughout the state, according to a Des Moines Register article. Another $10 million will be used to create a revolving loan program to support alternative energy projects for both new job creation and energy independence. Lawmakers passed a measure that reorganizes the Grow Iowa Values Fund and establishes a Grow Iowa Values Fund assistance program for…

The Montana Legislature adjourned last week after passing an $8 billion biennial budget for FY10 and FY11. The state Department of Commerce was allocated $74.9 million over the biennium, $1.7 million more than the governor's request. Newly funded initiatives within the department include $3.7 million over the biennium for workforce training grants through the New Worker Training program, $1.6 million for tribal economic development projects, $2 million for high-performance computing and $2.5 million in FY10 for biomedical research grants. No funding was provided for the Montana Fund-of-Funds, which was created under the 2005 Montana Equity Capital Act but has yet to be funded. Because fewer than 100 legislators voted in favor of the appropriations bill, Governor Schweitzer retains line item authority for the budget. One of the more contentious issues during the budget negotiations concerned tuition hikes and funding for Montana universities and community colleges. Gov. Brian Schweitzer favors a freeze on tuition rates at state schools, but university leaders have argued that state funding has proved insufficient. The FY10-11 budget reduces funding for the state…

The first report from Canada's new Science Technology and Innovation Council (STIC) concludes in the State of the Nation 2008 that the status quo is not good enough and more has to be done to sustain the country's innovation system. Established by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2007, Canada's STIC is the equivalent of the President's Council of Advisors for Science & Technology, or PCAST, in the U.S. Most of State of the Nation 2008 presents a statistical case for why Canada must be more aggressive in its innovation policies through comparison with other industrialized countries using more than 50 indicators of performance. In addition, the report profiles several regional and national efforts within Canada that are supporting innovation. The report suggests Canada is losing ground to other countries that are more actively supporting science, technology and innovation and that Canada's standard of living is likely to drop over the long term as a result - unless action is taken now. The opening sentence sums up why every government - federal, provincial/state or regional - must actively embrace tech-based economic development policies: "…

On a per capita basis, R&D obligations from the federal government to U.S. universities and colleges increased by 16 percent from FY 2002 to 2006, rising to $85.30 per person in FY06. Total U.S. federal R&D obligations to academia increased by 17.4 percent over the same five years, suggesting federal R&D did not keep pace with population growth during the period (see the April 15, 2009 issue of the Digest). Using population to standardize federal obligations to academia on the state level is less than ideal as the data don't have much to do with each other. But it provides a starting point for comparison. Toward that end, SSTI has prepared a table listing the academic obligations per capita from FY 2002 to 2006, the percent change of these obligations per capita over this period, and the relative rank of this change. The range in per capita figures among the states is significant. At $402.50, the District of Columbia led the nation in federal R&D obligations to academia per capita in 2006. This was followed by Maryland ($300.10), Massachusetts ($230.00), Hawaii ($165.50), and then Connecticut ($137.40). Twenty-four states had per capita academic R…

W. Steven Burke is the new president of Biofuels Center of North Carolina. Bill Gimson has been named executive director of the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. Gimson recently retired as the chief operating officer of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Jeremy Hill has been named the director of the Center for Economic Development and Business Research at Wichita State University. Hill replaces Janet Harrah, who left the post for Northern Kentucky University. Jack Jewett, a former president of the Arizona Board of Regents and five-term member of the Arizona House of Representatives, was chosen as the president and chief executive officer of the Flinn Foundation. He succeeds retiring president and CEO John Murphy, who has led the foundation since 1981. Jewett will assume the position in June. Judith Krauthamer has been appointed executive director of the Mid-Atlantic Coastal Ocean Observing Regional Association. The Angel Capital Association (ACA) and Angel Capital Education Foundation (ACEF) has named William Payne, ACA founder and active participant in four angel groups, as the recipient of the 2009 Hans…

President Obama announced earlier this week that the U.S. would increase its investment in basic and applied research and science and mathematics education to match the historic levels reached during the height of the space race. The president pledged to raise total government and industry spending on R&D to 3 percent of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP), equal to the record set in 1964. In addition to the increases in R&D spending already included in the Recovery Act, President Obama committed to finish the doubling of funds for federal science agencies and create several new programs to encourage students to pursue careers in STEM fields. Most of the components of the new R&D push were announced earlier this year. The administration remains committed to double the research budgets of the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy Office of Science and the National Institutes of Standards and Technology. DOE's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), which was launched with $400 million made available through the stimulus package, will fund the development of cutting-edge energy technologies. The president's FY10 budget would make the…

The technologies developed at the nation's 700 federal laboratories and research centers impact the health, energy, security, and agricultural needs of the country. They have a substantial effect on the economic growth of the U.S., especially as these technologies are commercialized. Improving efforts for commercialization from federal laboratories is a central focus of the Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC), as they are tasked by federal legislation to assist state and local governments and regional organizations with the transfer of technologies. The State and Local Government Committee of the FLC highlights several productive partnerships with TBED organizations in their Federal Laboratories & State and Local Governments: Partners for Technology Transfer Success publication. Through these kinds of partnerships, organizations with an abundance of federal labs nearby or those lacking proximity to the labs can access the technologies and know-how at the labs. In addition to the case studies, the publication contains contact information for the FLC regional coordinators across the county as well as an index of the FLC-affiliated laboratories in each state.…

Recent Obama Appointments Related to TBED and Research Not all of the new appointments to the Obama Administration make headlines, but many are as important for influencing the direction and administration of federal TBED policies and programs as well as the focus of federal science and technology investments. Since March 13, President Obama has announced the following nominations for positions that might influence state and regional TBED practice during the Administration: Jonathan Steven Adelstein, a Commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, to be Administrator, Rural Utilities Service, Department of Agriculture. Peter H. Appel, a principal with the global management consulting firm of A.T. Kearney, Inc., to be Administrator of the Research and Innovative Technology Administration, Department of Transportation. Rebecca M. Blank, Robert S. Kerr Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, to be Under Secretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs, responsible for the Census Bureau and Bureau of Economic Analysis. Raphael Bostic, Professor in USC's School of Policy, Planning, and Development , to be Assistant Secretary for Policy Development and Research…

The budget agreement passed by Maryland lawmakers earlier this month includes funding for several initiatives in support of Gov. Martin O'Malley's plan to invest more than $1 billion over ten years in Maryland's biotechnology industry. Declining state revenues as a result of the recession were not without their impact, however. A key component of the Bio 2020 Initiative is the state's investment in stem cell research. To this end, lawmakers approved $15.4 million for the Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund administered by the Maryland Technology Development Corporation (TEDCO).  This appropriation is $2.6 million less than the total funds available in FY09 and $3 million less than the governor's recommendation. TEDCO also will receive the governor's full recommendation of $3.7 million ($600,000 less than last year) for technology development, transfer and commercialization. The Maryland Biotechnology Investment Tax Credit Reserve Fund received the governor's full request of $6 million in FY10. The program encourages private investment in biotech firms by providing a 50 percent tax credit to investors. In support of Bio 2020, $4.7 million is included…

The most recent annual report of Ohio's Third Frontier initiative announced $3.52 billion in non-state resources has been provided for affiliated projects and companies - a nine to one ratio of state dollars leveraged. Since the Third Frontier's creation in 2002, $893 million in state funds have been awarded, with $403 million of that amount expended to date. The Third Frontier Initiative is a statewide effort administered by the Ohio Department of Development (ODOD) and is comprised of a diverse set of programs focused in areas such as research faculty recruitment, commercialization assistance, direct research funding, internship assistance, entrepreneurial development, and regional seed fund growth, among others. The ODOD report finds the aggregate results of the initiative since its launch has led to the direct creation or retention of 7,760 jobs. With an average salary of $67,700, the job figure represents a payroll in excess of $525 million dollars injected into the state's economy each year. By the end of 2008, 514 companies in Ohio have been created, attracted, or capitalized due to Frontier efforts, according to the report. The current funding…