New York City  Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced that the city is planning to double its $500 million investment in the LifeSci NYC commitment, to reach a total of $1 billion invested in life sciences over the next 10 years.

Falling demand for office real estate and public transit, greater need for flexible child care and requirements for reskilling are some of the insights gained into the future of Massachusetts’ workforce.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $60 million in funding for its largest-ever cohort of university-based Industrial Assessment Centers (IACs) to assist small- and medium-sized manufacturers in reducing their carbon emissions and lowering energy costs.

Vulnerabilities in the international networks that supply goods and services needed for finished products used by the Department of Defense were exposed to a higher degree during the pandemic, and became the subject of a congressional Armed Services task force. The bipartisan Defense Critical Supply Chain Task Force was established to make the security of the U.S.

Earlier this week, the House science committee advanced a series of technology-focused bills, including a $7 billion authorization of regional technology hubs. This legislation completes the committee’s work to produce a companion to the Senate’s U.S.

The PitchBook-NVCA Venture Capital Monitor for the first half of 2021 reveals that the market is set to break a number of investing records, but strikingly, the record levels of investment activity are all being set by the later stages of investment. At the other end of the funnel, activity is increasing, but not at the same pace as the overall market.

President Joe Biden nominated Laurie Locascio, Ph.D., to lead the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) within the U.S. Department of Commerce and serve as Undersecretary for Standards and Technology.

Editor's note: SSTI discovered that NASA updated their data which was used in this article after its publication. Specifically, the update included previously omitted 2020 application and awards data for Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, and Nevada; and 2014 data for Iowa. While the changes to the data were minute, we strive to provide the most accurate and reliable data available. As such, the article and the interactive graphic below have been updated to reflect these changes.

Last week, SSTI’s Innovation Advocacy Council chair Ben Johnson (also of BioSTL) testified before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Small Business about the role that innovation plays in job creation and how the U.S. Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Regional Innovation Clusters (RIC) and Growth Accelerators Fund Competition (GAFC) support these efforts.

The House Committee on Appropriations advanced an FY 2022 funding bill that provides for substantial increases to many science and innovation programs.

Today, the Economic Development Administration (EDA) announced funding opportunities for the $3 billion Congress provided the agency in the American Rescue Plan Act. Funds are available through six distinct challenges, with separate goals and application processes/deadlines for each.

This edition of Useful Stats explores data from the U.S. Patent and Trade Office (USPTO) on new utility and plant patents granted in the U.S. by state/territory for the five-year period from 2016 to 2020. This analysis includes only utility and plant patents as these types are those associated with the invention of new products and services, and excludes reissued patents and those issued for purely aesthetic designs.

Earlier this week, the U.S. Treasury’s Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund announced $1.25 billion in coronavirus-related “rapid response” funding to 863 CDFIs. Among the recipients were SSTI members Launch NY and Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund.

Two recent studies explored public perceptions of science and technology and higher education in the United States. The first study from the NSF National Science Board explores public perceptions and awareness of science and technology among American adults, and a separate report from New America analyzes attitudes on higher education, with a particular interest in the transition to online instruction in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center recently released the third report in its Some College, No Credentials (SCNC) series investigating the educational trajectory of U.S. adults who have left postsecondary education without receiving any credentials. This report addresses concerns about low student success rates across the nation and intends to identify opportunities where SCNC students can be encouraged to continue postsecondary programs and earn credentials.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury announced today that five states — Hawaii, Kansas, Maryland, Michigan and West Virginia — have had their State Small Business Credit Initiative (SSBCI) capital programs approved by the agency.

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker and Lt. Gov.

After declines in 2016 and 2017, the number of graduate students and postdoctoral appointees at the nation’s institutions of higher education increased nationally from 2018 to 2020, according to National Science Foundation (NSF) data from its Graduate Students and Postdoctorates in Science and Engineering (GSS) survey. However, this SSTI analysis shows considerable variation among the states over the five-year period from 2016 to 2020.

Two recent working papers — The Impact of High-Skilled Immigration on Regional Entrepreneurship from Columbia University and Getting Schooled: The Role of Universities in Attracting Immigrant Entrepreneurs from the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank — explore the impact of high-skilled immigrants on entrepreneurship and how universities attract immigrant entrepreneurs. Both papers find that high-skilled immigrants have a positive net effect on regional entrepreneurship and are critical to the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

NIH just launched the funding opportunity announcement for the third cohort of its regional biomedical proof-of-concept and accelerator program, the Research Evaluation and Commercialization Hubs. On Dec.

Over the past four fiscal years, there have been 1,977 initial public offerings (IPOs) completed by companies headquartered in the U.S., according to PitchBook, yielding more than $549 billion in capital invested. These companies are located in 45 states, D.C., and Puerto Rico. Almost 20% of those companies are no longer publicly held, having been returned to private ownership, been acquired, merged or gone out of business.

A working paper published in the National Bureau of Economic Research asked the question, “Do large firms produce more valuable inventions, and if so, why?” An excerpt of an analysis of the paper that appeared in the November 2022 issue of the NBER Digest follows with additional consideration from SSTI Vice President Mark Skinner on its i

State government agencies’ expenditures for research and development totaled nearly $2.5 billion in FY 2021, an increase of 1.1% from FY 2020, but far below the year-over-year inflation of 6.4% when measured in February 2022. The findings on state R&D were recently reported by the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES).

The National Association of State Budget Officers’ (NASBO) 2022 State Expenditures Report found total state spending to have grown an estimated 7.3% between fiscal years (FY) 2021 and 2022 ($2.66 to $2.86 trillion), 1.5 percentage points higher than the 36-year average growth of 5.8% per annum.

Earlier this week, the U.S. Department of the Treasury announced the approval of seven additional states’ programs for State Small Business Credit Initiative (SSBCI) funding, totaling over $1.6 billion: Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Virginia. A short summary of these states’ plans, all of which include investment capital, are available below: