Earlier this month, President Clinton signed legislation designed to ease the transfer of federal technology by providing clarification on intellectual property rights and offering incentives to federal laboratories and their researchers. The National Technology Transfer and Advancement Act of 1995 (H.R. 2196) was sponsored by Rep. Morella (R-Md).
While Congress and the White House continue to try to resolve differences on the FY96 federal budget, the Clinton Administration has released its detailed budget proposal for FY97.
The FY97 budget proposal calls for increasing spending on R&D to $72.3 billion in FY97, up from $71.5 billion in FY96.
Programs of particular interest to the states by federal agency are:
Department of Commerce
Clinton is expected to sign an emergency spending bill later today that will keep the government in operation through next Friday, March 22. Without the bill, parts of the government would have shut down for the third time this fiscal year.
Almost halfway through federal FY 1996, nine government departments are operating on temporary spending authority. Agencies that are affected include the Department of Commerce, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), NASA, and the National Science Foundation.
The General Accounting Office (GAO) released a report on the implementation of the Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Pilot Program. STTR is closely modeled after the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program with one notable exception: in the STTR Program, a small business must collaborate with a nonprofit research institution, such as a university. This collaboration is permitted but not required under SBIR.
The program began in FY1994 as a 3-year pilot and the authorizing legislation required that GAO report on the implementation of the program.
The Delta Regional Authority (DRA) announced the establishment of a consortium for research and innovation that is intended to have a long-term positive economic impact on the region. The 35-member consortium will be comprised of universities and other private and public institutions in eight states – Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, and Tennessee.
Although the United States remains among the world’s most competitive nations, its ability to effectively deliver quality math and science education hinders its competitiveness, according to the most recent edition of the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index. New commitments ranging from the White House to the philanthropic sector offer opportunities to increase the capacity for American schools to engage in additional STEM activities.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam recently announced a new fund to support economic development in rural parts of the state. While most of the $8 million (approximately $7 million) is designated for shovel-ready economic development sites and tourism projects, the state will commit $600,000 for economic development grants to support entrepreneurship in small towns across the state including $300,000 to support a Main Street Business Incubator Program for downtown business districts.
Women received significantly less financial support from biomedical research institutions than men early in their careers, according to Sex Differences in Institutional Support for Junior Biomedical Researchers – a study by Health Resources in Action’s Medical Foundation published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The GRA Venture Fund LLC, the private investment fund for companies originating from the Georgia Research Alliance's commercialization programs, has added another $25 million in venture capital. This latest round of funding brings the fund's total investment capital to $45 million. The fund currently has 10 portfolio companies. Combined, these 10 companies have collectively raised more than $241 million and have created over 400 jobs in the state of Georgia.
In the first three quarters of 2015, U.S. venture capital firms have invested $47.2 billion, more than the year-end totals for 17 of the past 20 years, according to new data from the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). About $16.3 billion was invested in 1,070 deals in the third quarter, bringing the 2015 total to $47.2 billion in 2,239 deals. Investment activity is on track to reach its highest annual level since 2000, and the second highest year since the beginning of PwC’s Moneytree report.
This week, the National Economic Council and Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released an update to the White House strategy document on fueling the U.S. innovation economy. A Strategy for American Innovation includes a model of the nation’s innovation engine that sheds some light on how the federal government views its role in research and economic growth. For example, digital government initiatives play a key role, alongside investing in basic research, digital infrastructure and STEM education.
Veolia, The Water Council, and the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation have reached an agreement to launch the emPowering Opportunities in Water (POW!) program – a two-year national competition to support entrepreneurship and economic development while fostering sustainability efforts in the field of water.
The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) announced today the addition of three more cluster organizations to the portfolio of communities supported through the SBA Regional Innovation Clusters initiative, raising the total number of awardees in the program to 14.
At more than 54 million, freelancers now make up more than one-third of the U.S. workforce, according to Freelancing in America 2015, an annual report commissioned by The Freelancers Union and Upwork. Half of all freelancers surveyed for the report said that, regardless of pay, they would not take a traditional job. Furthermore, 60 percent of respondents said that they were freelancing more by choice than by necessity, compared to 53 percent the previous year.
On National Manufacturing Day, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U.S. Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced they will commit $5.8 million over the next three years to establish and sustain a consortium focused on the identification of new, emerging areas of advanced manufacturing.
The last decade has seen a rapid expansion and deepening of the types of vehicles that fund startup firms in the U.S. and worldwide, according to The Globalisation of Angel Investments – a new study from Josh Lerner, Antoinette Schoar, Stanislav Sokolinksy, and Karen Wilson. In particular, the authors have seen a growing role for angel groups and other more “individualistic” funding options, such as super angels or crowd sourcing platforms.
At more than $456 billion, the value of research and development performed in the United States grew 4.8 percent from 2012 to 2013 according to new data from the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES). Over that same one-year period, U.S. gross domestic product grew at just 3.7 percent.
Venture investors around the world have more confidence in the U.S. market than any other in the world, according to the 2015 Global Venture Capital Confidence Survey from Deloitte and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). Israel, Canada, China and the UK also ranked among the top five. The U.S. policy environment, however, received lower reviews.
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.
Since the establishment of the Tennessee Promise in 2014, the first statewide free community college effort, community college systems and states are outlining their own strategies to make a two-year education free for students in their region in attempt to create an educated, qualified workforce that addresses the needs of industry and promotes economic prosperity. While it may remain too early to judge the benefits and the costs of these programs – lawmakers and educational professionals remain divided on the issue.
The Department of Energy (DOE) released the 2015 Quadrennial Technology Review (QTR), a more than 500-page report examining the status of foundational energy science and technology (S&T). The QTR also highlights the research, development, demonstration, and deployment (RDD&D) opportunities with a focus on technologies with commercialization potential in the mid-term and beyond.
Researchers from the Federal Reserve Banks of Kansas City and Atlanta, along with the John J Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University, recently published a comprehensive examination of the state of contemporary workforce initiatives. Editors Carl Van Horn, Tammy Edwards and Todd Green have assembled chapters and case studies from more than 70 authors that depict challenges, long-term structural changes and policy opportunities in national, state and local workforce efforts in the current economy.
As the Federal Aviation Administration continues to propose regulations around the fledging unmanned aircraft system (UAS) industry in order to ensure that it integrates into the current system as well as possible, states are beginning to act in order to improve their own competitiveness.
As a reminder, the closing date for applications to the Regional Innovation Strategies (RIS) program is Monday, October 5. A program of the EDA’s Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, the 2015 RIS Program Competition includes $10 million to support two unique grant opportunities:
Earlier this week during a keynote address at the United Nations, a U.S. Department of State official unveiled an initiative to bring 1.5 billion people around the world online by 2020. Global Connect, the new initiative, will be a cross-agency effort to make Internet access a top priority in foreign policy. The State Department announcement explicitly states that Internet access is being made a priority because of its role in entrepreneurship, innovation, knowledge flows and market creation.