Mark your calendar for Sept. 6-8 to join us in Atlanta for the 2023 SSTI Annual Conference!
Attendees will have the chance to share best practices and problem solve with colleagues who share your passion for innovation. There will be opportunities to explore funding sources to help take your projects to the next level, learn about the latest trends and topics in the innovation economy, and more!
The European Council and the European Parliament have reached a provisional agreement to strengthen Europe’s semiconductor ecosystem, a deal designed to double the EU’s global market share in semiconductors from 10% to 20% by 2030.
Venture capital (VC) activity continued to decline in the first quarter of 2023, according to data from Pitchbook-NVCA Venture Monitor Q1 2023. Total deal count declined, with exit count and venture-growth also slowing, and angel and seed activity hitting a 10-quarter low. The difficulties facing the market grew with tensions from the continuation of the Russian-Ukrainian war, the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, and high inflation rates.
Late last week, the Economic Development Administration (EDA) released “Tech Hubs Program Fact Sheet,” which provides some information on where the Tech Hubs program is headed. However, the sheet leaves many questions unanswered and raises new questions about how the program will be administered. The program, authorized in the CHIPS and Science Act at $10 billion, received $500 million in funding to date.
The recession brought upon by the COVID-19 pandemic (February 2020 – April 2020) saw an extremely sharp drop in both GDP and employment, followed by a relatively fast return to non-recessionary rates of unemployment. This swift recovery was a substantial contrast to the periods of the Dot Com Recession (March 2001 – November 2001) and Great Recession (December 2007 – June 2009). These previous recessions saw both dips in GDP, followed by gradual rises in unemployment rates over several months or years, with a gradual decrease in unemployment over the coming years.
Without information and connections on how to access and leverage the diverse American workforce, foreign multinational companies often have trouble finding qualified workers as they establish new – or expand existing – operations in the United States. Now, these companies have help from the SelectTalent USA initiative, a joint initiative of the U.S. Departments of Commerce, Labor, and Education.
Despite Carnegie Classification as an R2 institution, Northern Illinois University (NIU) and other similar universities do not qualify for existing R&D capacity-building initiatives targeting Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) states or minority-serving institutions (MSIs).
This week, the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) announced 40 new Growth Accelerator Fund Competition awardees. SSTI’s proposal to identify programs and partners that have expanded the participation of minority business owners and researchers in the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program is among the winners.
OrthoWorx, a nonprofit organization established in 2009 to advance Indiana’s orthopedics industry in Kosciusko County, received a $30 million appropriation from Indiana’s new two-year budget. Kosciusko County, home to companies that represent about half of the $60 billion global market for total joint replacements, is considered the orthopedic capital of the world. In 2022, the Northeast Indiana Regional Partnership estimated the industry accounts for more than 22,000 jobs in the region and approximately $19 billion in revenue.
When Dan Berglund, SSTI’s president and CEO, testified in a hearing before the House on an early draft of the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, he noted that funding from the federal government that addresses the whole innovation system rather than individual elements of the system would be critical to building a regional innovation economy and different than any other federal program.
As the U.S. seeks to maintain its competitive edge in the global economy, it is important to acknowledge the contributions of immigrant innovators toward U.S. growth and competitiveness. Despite making up only 16% of the population, immigrant inventors are responsible for approximately 36% of the U.S. innovative output since 1990, and have founded some of the most successful companies in the nation.
The Advanced Research Projects for Health (ARPA-H) released plans to establish hub sites in three locations across the United States and announced their strategy for site selection.
The press release for the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) opens in what has become a tradition for environmental reporting: a dire statistic intended to inspire a desire for action.
Expanding U.S. innovation capacity sits at the heart of SSTI’s mission, and it was that driving force that guided our response to the Economic Development Administration’s request for information to inform the planning and design of the regional Technology and Innovation Hub (Tech Hubs) program last week. With $10 billion authorized for the program, and $500 million appropriated, the opportunity for growth in the nation demands a thoughtful and actionable plan.
The idea of changing the 40 hour workweek standard has been floated for decades, and more frequently discussed in recent years as companies confront pandemic-related stress, burnout and the “Great Resignation.” But, even as some smaller U.S. companies (mostly in tech) have moved toward offering a shorter workweek, the idea has not become mainstream, despite some states’ best efforts.
The SSTI Innovation Advocacy Council continues to work toward additional appropriations for Regional Technology and Innovation Hubs, Build to Scale, and the Federal and State Technology (FAST) Partnership. This week, the Council facilitated meetings with SSTI members and congressional offices to discuss funding priorities. SSTI also released a letter signed by 70 national and regional entities that support fully-funding the Tech Hubs program.
Despite COVID-induced setbacks continuing to keep some people out of offices and laboratories, new Business Enterprise Research and Development Survey (BERD) data reveals that domestic research and development (R&D) spending, although slowing, is still on an uptrend.
Higher education enrollment dropped 1.1% between fall 2021 and 2022, a slight reprieve from historic COVID-induced drop-offs, as revealed by new preliminary data from the National Student Clearinghouse. Since fall 2020, enrollment has decreased by a combined 3.2% for graduate and undergraduate enrollment, representing a drop of approximately 1.5 million students since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a recent study titled Does NIH select the right healthcare ventures through the SBIR grant program?, researchers from Rutgers University and the University of Connecticut took advantage of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) to conduct a natural experiment.
In a recent study titled Does NIH select the right healthcare ventures through the SBIR grant program?, researchers from Rutgers University and the University of Connecticut took advantage of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) to conduct a natural experiment. The opportunity was available due to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) decision to use ARRA dollars to fund additional Phase I SBIR awards from general SBIR competitions, and the researchers compared these 19 ARRA-funded awards to the other 479 Phase I awards that were first funded in the same competitions with regular appropriations.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) recently announced a new initiative — the Experiential Learning for Emerging and Novel Technologies (ExLENT) initiative and seeks proposals to address barriers in the STEM workforce by encouraging partnerships among industry, educational, and government organizations.
Thirty-six states are holding gubernatorial elections this November, with voters in eight of those states (Arizona, Arkansas, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, and Oregon), choosing a new governor to replace a term-limited incumbent. In two states, Connecticut and Georgia, the incumbent is facing a re-match with their 2018 opponent, while in Alaska and Maine, the incumbent is being challenged by his/her predecessor, whom they defeated in 2018. Florida Gov. Ron De Santis is being challenged by former Gov.
New fiscal year (FY) 2021 Higher Education Research & Development (HERD) survey data released by the National Science Foundation (NSF) reveals a $3.4 billion (4%) increase in research and development (R&D) spending by institutions of higher education ($86.5 to $89.9 billion), driven almost entirely by a decades high federal government R&D funding increase of $3 billion.
The National Association of State Budget Officers’ (NASBO) Fall 2022 Fiscal Survey of States, released last month, reflects a more positive fiscal environment than last year and found that F
In larger VC firms with more assets under management (AUM), women at all levels received pay in line with what men received, with the median total cash for female general partners above that of the men. However, women at smaller AUM firms received significantly less total cash compensation than men, particularly at the managing general partner level, according to a survey on professional compensation in venture capital firms conducted by First Republic Bank recently and J. Thelander Consulting, Inc.
SSTI is excited to announce staffing changes that are helping us build on our mission to strengthen initiatives to create a better future through science, technology, innovation and entrepreneurship. Over the past few months, SSTI has added five new staff members — Casey Nemecek, Jerry Coughter, Jonathan Dillon, Lisa Clayton and Sobia Saied — strengthened our student interns/assistants program, and promoted Mark Skinner to executive vice president and Jason Rittenberg to vice president.
Recent SSTI staff additions: