On June 4, Congresswoman Lori Trahan (D-MA-03) and Congressman Jay Obernolte (R-CA-23), members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, released a discussion draft of the Great American AI Act, bipartisan legislation to create a federal framework for how the U.S. will govern artificial intelligence. According to a press release from the Office of Congresswoman Trahan, the act is the product of ongoing bipartisan conversations and builds on the bipartisan House AI Task Force.
The new Income Distribution Analysis Tool (IDAT), released by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), allows users to easily build custom tables, maps, and charts within BEA’s platform. Fueled by data from the distribution of personal income statistics , data is available at the national and state levels and covers various income series, distribution metrics, and more. The number of years available varies by selection, with some having 25 years of data available. The tool may be useful for economic developers and academic researchers to evaluate the effectiveness of significant policy decisions by helping assess changes over time in the standard of living for various areas of the country.
According to NSF and the SEMI Foundation, “By 2030, the United States is projected to face a shortfall of approximately 127,000 to 157,000 semiconductor and microelectronics workers.” In an effort to counteract the potential challenge to U.S. competitiveness, the foundation is serving as the Hub Operator for the National Network for Microelectronics Education (NNME) and recently announced the launch of the first four Regional Nodes of the NNME. Three of the four nodes are led by SSTI members: Boise State University, the University of Texas at Austin, and the Arizona Commerce Authority. The fourth node is led by NY Creates.
Every week, SSTI members receive the Funding Supplement, an exclusive members-only electronic publication with information on applications, eligibility criteria, and submission deadlines for funding opportunities offered by federal government agencies, foundations, and other organizations. Expanding this benefit, SSTI has released a Funding Supplement Search for members, including over 200 active and 5,700 total opportunities to reference. Every week, new opportunities are added and updated.
Within the search, funding opportunities can be filtered by active or all opportunities, by award type (e.g., fellowship, federal, foundation), and keywords.
This week's joint meeting of the Lab-to-Market and Entrepreneurship Development subcommunities of SSTI's TBED Community of Practice focused on how the NSF I-Corps and DOE Energy I-Corps programs help researchers move discoveries beyond the lab and toward real-world use. A central theme was the importance of engaging potential customers early, testing market assumptions, and confirming the existence of a real need before investing significant resources in technology development.
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has proposed sweeping revisions to the rules for procurement and grant making (2 CFR Part 200) in the Federal Register. These changes would solidify an August 2025 executive order that gives political appointees final authority over awarding federal grants.
A new working paper from researchers affiliated with the U.S. Census Bureau and several universities revisits one of the biggest questions in innovation policy: why has productivity growth slowed even as research and development spending continues to rise? For the technology-based economic development (TBED) community, the answer matters because it shapes how states, regions, and federal agencies think about innovation investments.
The U.S. National Science Foundation announced the launch of the NSF Tech Accelerators initiative. As proposed, the accelerators will align to four topics—agricultural technology (AgTech), materials technology (MaterialsTech), ocean technology (OceanTech), and scientific instrumentation (SciTech).
The venture capital market is undergoing significant structural changes, and TBED organizations are under increasing pressure to adjust existing and develop new strategies to meet evolving market conditions and address emerging gaps. For TBED investors, modeling how long investments must be held and what the exit paths are is critical for setting expectations with stakeholders, projecting fund utilization, and anticipating returns that can be reinvested. To that end, SSTI examined over 6,000 exits from VC-backed companies listed in PitchBook with identified nonprofit or government investments to characterize what TBED investors can expect. Our analysis found that it is taking more time and more rounds for companies to find successful exits, putting additional pressure on venture development organization (VDO) and other TBED portfolios by consuming scarce resources and limiting opportunities to reinvest proceeds.
To support data-driven economic and workforce development, the Purdue Center for Regional Development (PCRD), in partnership with the EDA, has released a new Regional Clusters website with compiled data presented across interactive dashboards with maps, tables, and other tools and resources. The dashboards cover industry-based, skills, and knowledge clusters. PCRD’s definitions of each cluster type can be found here or within their respective dashboard.
Tuition-free community college programs have expanded steadily across the country over the past decade. A recent NBER working paper examines one of the earliest examples of a statewide program, asking not just whether free tuition increases enrollment, but also whether it helps more students complete their degrees.
