Seven States Selected to Identify, Implement Strategies for Enhancing Manufacturing
A newly established policy academy providing guidance and technical assistance will help seven states improve their environment for innovation and align state R&D investments, workforce development and education systems with current and future needs of advanced manufacturing industries. The policy academy will help each state develop a plan or overcome barriers for putting a plan into action through a highly interactive team-based process that includes input from NGA, MEP, EDA, SSTI, private sector consultants, and research organizations.
Research Park RoundUp
As budgets for economic development tighten across all sectors, measuring and reporting impact becomes even more crucial for sustaining support. The Association of University Research Parks points to three impressive impact reports released this year from Indiana's Purdue Research Park, Nebraska Technology Park and North Dakota State University Research and Technology Park.
Report Provides Canadian Government with Recommendations to Strengthen R&D Policies
The Canadian government must focus its research and development (R&D) support efforts on "the goal of growing innovative firms into larger enterprises, rooted in Canada but facing outward to the world and equipped to compete with the best," according to Innovation Canada: A Call to Action — a new report commissioned by the Honorable Gary Goodyear, the Canadian Minister of State for Science and Technology. The authors contends that Canada has a solid foundation to build its knowledge economy.
EU Releases Competitiveness Report, Several Members Form Science Europe
The European Union (EU) released its first competitiveness report on all 27 EU member nations and six associated countries — Innovation Union Competitiveness Report 2011. Providing a deeper perspective on European R&D intensity, the report is intended to monitor the progress towards EU and national R&D headline targets and provide economic evidence and analysis to underpin the development of EU and national innovation policies. Twelve key findings are highlighted within the report including:
Additional Higher Ed Funding to Support Research, STEM Efforts in Virginia
To help meet the goals of Virginia's Top Jobs Act enacted earlier this year, Gov. Bob McDonnell proposed $200 million in additional higher education funding over the next two years. A large portion of the new funds would support cancer and high-tech research, competitive research grant awards, and efforts to graduate more science, technology, engineering, mathematics and healthcare (STEM-H) majors.
U.S. Sources Funded More Than 80% of Worldwide Industrial R&D in 2011
U.S. companies performed over $294 billion in research and development (R&D) in 2011, according to the Business R&D and Innovation Survey (BRDIS) – a business survey conducted annually by the U.S. Census Bureau and the National Science Foundation. Companies funded an overwhelming majority of the industrial R&D conducted in the U.S. (81.2 percent, approximately $238.8 billion). Approximately $55.3 million of industrial R&D (18.8 percent) was funded by other sources, predominately from the federal government ($31.3 billion). U.S.
ARPA-E Announces $125M Challenge for Disruptive Energy Technologies
The Department of Energy’s (DOE) Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) announced that it will commit up to $125 million for its 2015 OPEN competition to Support R&D projects on potentially disruptive new energy technologies. Applications should be able to address how the proposed technology will be able to make a significant impact in one of the three mission areas of ARPA-E – to reduce imported energy, to reduce energy-related emissions, and to improve energy efficiency.
R&D Tax Credits Increase Resiliency of R&D-Intensive Firms
As the federal and state governments look for methods to support the creation and retention of well-paying science and tech (S&T) and manufacturing jobs, two recent reports have found that R&D tax credits play a vital role in helping keep domestic R&D-intensive firms resilient from economic downtowns and competition from emerging economics.
DOD Releases Solicitation for $75M Flexible Hybrid Electronics Manufacturing Innovation Institute
The Department of Defense (DOD) released a federal funding opportunity (FFO) to establish the newest Institute for Manufacturing Innovation (IMI) focused on flexible hybrid electronics manufacturing. Administered by the Air Force Research Laboratory, the Flexible Hybrid Electronics is the seventh IMI to be established under the Obama administration and the fifth to be led by the DOD. Lead applicant eligibility is restricted to nonprofit organizations. However, applicants are encouraged to establish a regional consortium that includes members from academia, government and industry.
DOE Combines Three Programs Into New $45M Program for Disruptive Solar Technologies
The Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) announced that it will combine three existing programs (Incubator, SolarMat, and SUNPATH) into the Sunshot Technology to Market Program – a new funding program to support startups and other for-profit organizations as they bring disruptive solar innovations to the market place. Historically, the three programs that comprise the new program were separated by stage of technology development.
NSF Awarded $6.8B for Research, STEM Education in FY14
The National Science Foundation (NSF) was appropriated $7.2 billion in FY14 (not including mandatory accounts) of which over $6.8 billion (nearly 95 percent of NSF’s total appropriations) was used to support research and education awards. Over 1,800 institutions of higher education and other organizations received funding from NSF including 11,000 competitively reviewed awards according to a report released by the NSF. Other highlights include:
Report Identifies 50 Critical Scientific Breakthroughs for Sustainable Development
There are 50 areas of need for paradigm-shaping breakthrough technologies that would help stimulate sustainable global development, according to a new report from the Institute for Globally Transformative Technologies at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab – The 50 Breakthroughs Study. The authors contend that decisionmakers, funding organizations, impact investors, and inventors should focus on developing transformative, breakthrough technologies in these areas instead of supporting incremental technologies.
Battelle Study: NSF, NIST, DOE Lead in Patent Output Per Dollar
The National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Department of Energy (DOE) far outpace their peer agencies in patenting output per dollar, according to a new study by Battelle's Technology Partnership Practice. Research funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the focus of the study, generated one patent for every $16.9 million invested by the federal government between 2000-2013.
Uber Partners With Universities to Support R&D, Entrepreneurship
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.
With R&D Recognized as Investment in GDP Statistics, U.S. R&D-to-GDP Ratio Falls
Because of recent changes in the methodologies used by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), research and development is now recognized as investment in statistics on U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). As a result, from 1929 to 2012, the average annual growth rate of GDP is 0.1 percentage point higher than in the previously published estimates.
MIT Committee: Decline in Basic Research Investment Threatens U.S. Innovation
Although the benefits of basic research are often misunderstood due to their lack of immediate payoff, a new report by the MIT Committee to Evaluate the Innovation Deficit finds that this research is of the utmost importance in sustaining U.S. economic competitiveness. In The Future Postponed: Why Declining Investment in Basic Research Threatens a U.S.
SSTI commentary: What is a fair share of R&D? A closer look at benchmarking
Would you expect a community of 100,000 people to have less than one-half as much R&D activity as a community with 250,000 residents? Such a simple question cannot be considered without more information. You may ask which two communities are being compared.
Would you expect a community of 100,000 people to have less than one-half as much R&D activity as a community with 250,000 residents? Such a simple question cannot be considered without more information. You may ask which two communities are being compared. Would your answer be different if you learned the smaller community was a college town with a research-intensive university as its core economic engine, while the second community was largely a distribution hub and didn’t have a similar R&D asset?* Yet politicians, pundits, media and even policymakers often benchmark cities, regions and states on incomplete or irrelevant information.
Business R&D performed in US increases
In 2015, businesses spent 4.4 percent more on R&D performed in the U.S. than they did in 2014, reaching $356 billion total, the NSF reports. Of the total R&D expenditures in 2015, companies spent $22 billion (6 percent) on basic research, $56 billion (16 percent) on applied research, and $278 billion (78 percent) on development.
Administration R&D memo emphasizes basic science
The White House Office of Management and Budget released a memorandum on R&D priorities that directs agencies to prioritize basic science and lower costs in their FY 2019 budget requests. R&D investments should be made in military superiority, security, prosperity, energy dominance and health. The memo repeatedly encourages officials to identify, and divest of, research areas where industry is ready to make their own investments toward commercial development.
Foundations to Fund Moonshot R&D Initiatives at Universities in CA, IN, NY, PA, TX
As the 2015-2016 academic calendar comes to an end, several universities announced large financial contributions from foundations to address large societal issues including cancer and a variety of neurological disorders. These large-scale initiatives will be undertaken at universities in California, Indiana, New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas.
Research Institute Struggles Raise Questions About Big Dollar Recruitment Approaches
Because a research base that generates new knowledge is a key pillar of a technology-based economy, an important strategy in technology-based economic development is the expansion of research capacity. While states may go about addressing this in a variety of ways (e.g., R&D tax-credits, university-industry partnerships, recruiting eminent scholars), Florida drew national attention when it took a different approach last decade, allocating more than $450 million to attract nine research institutes through its Innovation Incentive Program (IIP).
NSF InfoBrief: US R&D Increased $21.1B in 2014
U.S. research and development (R&D) performance rose to $477.7 billion in 2014 – an increase of $21.1 billion over 2013, according to a recent National Science Foundation (NSF) InfoBrief. When adjusted for inflation, growth in U.S. total R&D performance (1.2 percent annually between 2008 and 2014) matched the average pace of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP).
Useful Stats: 50 State Table Reveals University R&D Change Over Five Years
Nearly half of the U.S. states and the District of Columbia saw a 10 percent or greater increase in higher education R&D expenditures from FY 2010 to FY 2015 with five of those states (Connecticut, Georgia, Massachusetts, Nebraska, and Utah) seeing at least a 20 percent change, according to the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) survey for 2015. Between FY10-15 overall U.S. research and development (R&D) spending at U.S.
Cures Act Provides Research Funding, Direction
The 21st Century Cures Act was signed by President Obama on Tuesday and is broadly intended to facilitate the research, development and transfer of medical discoveries in order to better-address diseases affecting American people. While the bill has received mainstream coverage for its bipartisanship – the core authors were two Democrats and two Republicans – and billions in new research spending – more than $5 billion in authorizations – the text also contains potentially significant changes for federally-supported medical research policy.
Top Stories from 2016 and a Preview of 2017
This week, we take a look at the top SSTI Weekly Digest stories from 2016 and give you an idea of what to look for in the coming months.