SSTI Digest

Last week, in contrast to the mid-April House and Senate approval of a budget resolution that is projected to result in a double digit decline in federal R&D spending by 2004, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation approved the Federal Research Investment Act, which would double federal basic research funding over an eleven-year period. S. 296 establishes a long-term plan for federal funding of fundamental, scientific, and pre-competitive engineering.

Also last week, the Committee approved the NASA reauthorization bill for fiscal years (FY) 2000 through 2002. S. 342 would authorize $13.4 billion for FY 2000, $13.8 billion in FY 2001, and $13.9 billion in FY 2002. Senators Conrad Burns (R-MT) and John D. Rockefeller (D-WV) offered an amendment to provide three-year funding for the NASA Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). The adopted funding authorizations include $10 million in FY 2000, $15 million in FY 2001 and $20 million in FY 2003.

Cheryl Lyman, policy analyst with the State Science and Technology Institute, will be leaving SSTI today to accept a position with the Ohio Department of Commerce as its fiscal officer. Cheryl has worked with SSTI since its opening in 1996. We wish her well in her new position!

Robert Templin, president of Virginia's Center for Innovative Technology (CIT), has resigned. Wolfgang Tolle, managing director, has been named acting president. Patsy Brown, CIT's director of public affairs, also has left CIT.

Steve Jarvis resigned as the director of California Trade and Commerce's Office of Strategic Technology. Jeff Newman has been named as acting director.

Cheryl Lyman, policy analyst with the State Science and Technology Institute, will be leaving SSTI today to accept a position with the Ohio Department of Commerce as its fiscal officer. Cheryl has worked with SSTI since its opening in 1996. We wish her well in her new position!

Robert Templin, president of Virginia's Center for Innovative Technology (CIT), has resigned. Wolfgang Tolle, managing director, has been named acting president. Patsy Brown, CIT's director of public affairs, also has left CIT.

Steve Jarvis resigned as the director of California Trade and Commerce's Office of Strategic Technology. Jeff Newman has been named as acting director.

Marty Grueber has left the Rhode Island Economic Policy Council (RIEPC) to join Battelle Memorial Institute and the Environmental Technology Commercialization Center. Beth Ashman Collins has been named director of research at RIEPC.

John Dougherty resigned his position with the Illinois Coalition to accept a job in the private sector.

Kate Latta Hoffher, senior public affairs specialist with the National Science Foundation's Office of Legislative and Public Affairs, is on detail to NSF's Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) until the end of July.

Terri Adams is serving as Chief of the Science, Technology and Energy Division of the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs. Martha McInnis resigned from ADECA in January.

U.S. dominance as a source of technology for other economies is in serious trouble, according to "R&D Trends in the U.S. Economy: Strategies and Policy Implications," a new report by Gregory Tassey, senior economist with the Strategic Planning and Economic Analysis Group of the National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST).

The report highlights trends and global developments that are changing the nature of innovation and underlying research and development activities. NIST concludes that without the merger of R&D policy and a long-term economic growth policy, the U.S. role in innovation and the world economy is threatened.

Only seven percent of US industries have the necessary R&D intensity, measured by R&D-to-sales ratios, to maintain world class innovation, Tassey observed. Equally discouraging is the shift of US private R&D objectives to shorter-term projects and quicker paybacks.

An interagency task force of the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) has released its findings on the state of the science and technology partnership between the federal government and universities.

The review of the government/university partnership began three years ago in response to letters from leaders in industry and academia, state governors, and Congress stating that incremental changes in government policy and administrative practices were undermining national objectives and harming universities. They urged a thorough review of the government-university research partnership to strengthen it and make it more effective.

The United States Innovation Partnership (USIP) reported on a recent roundtable discussion on the 21st Century Economy. The topic of the discussion was the role of states in science and technology. The roundtable highlighted "best practices" in technology-based economic development in five states (Oklahoma, Kansas, Indiana, Utah, and Pennsylvania).

USIP is a state-federal partnership, created in 1997, to establish a new working relationship between the states and the federal government which will promote the development of a national innovation system. The roundtable was profiled in the most recent issue of PACESETTER, a publication of the Technology Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce. A complete copy of the text of this article will be available soon at http://www.ta.doc.gov/Newsletters.htm