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The Georgia Research Alliance (GRA) — a nonprofit working to grow Georgia’s economy through supporting research at state universities — recently announced that its portfolio of companies had raised more than over $2 billion in venture capital. These startups also had a high survival rate — 88% were still in business four years after launch, outpacing the national average of 44%. Along with this announcement, GRA released 2021 data on their economic impact on the state, demonstrating growth from the previous year.

Data center technology processing passed the milestone of consuming 1% of world energy in 2010 and is projected to increase to 6% by 2030, according to a 2020 Science magazine study  by Eric Masanet, Arman Shehabi, Nuoa Lei, Sarah Smith, and Jonathan Koomey. The authors suggest that governments may need to take on a more considered approach to expanding data centers to meet the growing demand.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury recently approved 20 additional state awards under the State Small Business Credit Initiative (SSBCI) Technical Assistance Grant Program, totaling more than $50.8 million. These awards will provide legal, accounting, and financial advisory services to eligible small businesses applying for the SSBCI capital program and other government small business programs.

Fifty-seven percent of Americans say science has had a mostly positive effect on society, according to a recent report from the Pew Research Center. While the percentage of those with favorable views of science might seem like good news, the number is significantly less than at the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak in January 2019, when 73% of Americans declared positive views.

A new report finds that state agencies face challenges when working to implement Justice40 goals. Justice40 is an initiative included in President Biden’s Executive Order 14008, signed on January 27, 2021.

Institutions of higher education spent $97.8 billion on research and development (R&D) activities in fiscal year (FY) 2022, an increase of nearly 9% over the prior year’s $89.8 billion. Over the past decade of available data, from FY 2013-2022, higher education R&D expenditures have increased 46%, from $67.1 to $97.8 billion. However, when adjusted for inflation, the growth is more modest at 17%.

The Baldrige Performance Excellence Program at NIST recently released the Job Quality Toolkit which outlines eight “drivers of job quality.” The toolkit aims to enhance the discussion around job quality, becoming an “actionable tool… to improve the quality of every job,” which will improve employee recruitment and retention.

The United States' 42 federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs) received a record $26 billion in federal government funding in fiscal year 2022 — a nearly 6% increase compared to the previous year. FFRDCs expended $26.5 billion on R&D in FY 2022, marking the ninth consecutive year of nominal growth. On average, FFRDCs have increased R&D expenditures by 1.3% per annum since 2012.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $540 million in awards for research into clean energy technologies and low-carbon manufacturing at 54 universities and 11 national laboratories.

A recent announcement from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) included major updates requiring open access to federally funded research. The new guidance will require federal agencies to ensure that all taxpayer-funded research is immediately available to the public, disallowing the previous optional 12-month embargos.

Setting aside multibillion fraud and the large black market economy, cryptomining inflicts pain to society in quieter ways as well, research found.

With President Biden’s signing the CHIPS and Science Act on Aug. 9, states and universities are already making plans to build on the funding opportunities present in the legislation.

Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Director Laurie E. Locascio recently revealed in public comments that approximately $3 billion in funding for the National Advanced Packaging Manufacturing Program will be used to drive U.S. leadership in advanced packaging.

Restrictions placed on registering for high-wage-potential academic majors have had an increasingly disproportionate adverse effect on students from underrepresented minority groups (URM: Black, Hispanic, and American Indian or Alaska Native), according to research from the Bookings Institution.

Jobs held by degree holders in Science and Engineering (S&E) fields make important contributions to our nation’s economic growth and global competitiveness, fueling innovative capacity through research, development, and other technologically advanced work activities, according to the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Reminder!

The TBED Community of Practice webinar is coming up next week! 

Interactive Webinar: Lessons Learned in TBED Grant Management—December 5, 2023, at 3:00 p.m. ET.

Congratulations on winning federal funding! Are you ready to manage it? A first federal award can be a significant challenge for organizations. Even experienced groups can hit snags when working with new agencies that may use different rules or definitions.

The U.S. has a STEM workforce problem, and finding diverse talent to fill existing and projected vacancies has proven to be particularly challenging. "Only about 20% of Latina/o students and 18% of Black students enroll in STEM majors, according to research published in 2019 in Educational Research.

SSTI has released a new data tool that defines investment activity, one indicator of the vibrancy of a region’s innovation economy, in each of 18 technology areas.

With a GDP of over $23 trillion in 2021, the United States has the world's largest economy, according to the latest available data from the World Bank. Yet, the U.S. falls behind such countries as Israel and Korea when it comes to how much is spent on research and development (R&D) in proportion to GDP. For example, Israel and Korea spend 5.56% and 4.93% of their GDP on R&D compared to the U.S.’ 3.46%.

A group of associations representing private investment funds, including the National Venture Capital Association, jointly filed a lawsuit in the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The challenge of attracting and retaining skilled manufacturing talent consistently ranks as a top concern in the industry. Recent findings from the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) show that more than 70% of industry leaders cite workforce issues as their primary challenge for the past year, outpacing supply chain disruptions and rising raw material costs.

All across the U.S., states are experiencing a crisis-level shortage of affordable housing.

The semiconductor industry's workforce is expected to grow from approximately 345,000 jobs today to about 460,000 by the decade's end, and of these new jobs, roughly 67,000 are at risk of being unfilled, according to a report from the Semiconductor Industry Association and Oxford Economics (SIA-OE report).

The SIA-OE report makes three recommendations for addressing this shortage:

The U.S. Economic Development Administration’s (EDA’s) annual Build to Scale (B2S) program (previously Regional Innovation Strategies) completed its tenth award cycle this year, with over $270 million in grants across 437 awards since inception in Fiscal Year (FY) 2014. FY 2023 was the largest award cycle, totaling $53 million in federal awards across the Venture and Capital Challenges.