SSTI Digest

As the National Science Foundation points out in a recent press release, people of Hispanic descent comprise 16 percent of the U.S. workforce, but only 6 percent of people working in STEM-related occupations.  Other minorities, including African Americans and Native Americans are also underrepresented in the career paths most critical to maintain American preeminence in innovation and science. New funding rounds distributed by three federal initiatives at NSF and NASA intend to help improve the imbalance.

NSF announced the first 31 undergraduate STEM education projects to be funded through the new Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI) program on Aug. 8. Totaling $45 million, the new awards are intended to help build STEM related capacity at these HSIs and increase retention/graduation rates of Hispanic STEM students. More than 60 percent of Hispanic students attend college at an HSI. Several of the recipient institutions of the inaugural awards — five community colleges and three four-year universities — have received little or no NSF funding in the past, according to NSF.

At the end of this month, applications are due for two of the federal government’s most notable programs for funding clusters and regional innovation initiatives: the SBA’s Regional Innovation Clusters (RIC) program and the EDA’s Regional Innovation Strategies (RIS) program. As practitioners develop their proposals for these programs, it is worth considering potential lessons learned from the successes of previous awardees and the major challenges they have faced.

Less than 18 months ago, the future of the RIC and RIS programs seemed dim. However, due to the support of bipartisan congressional champions and an all-hands-on deck advocacy effort led by SSTI’s Innovation Advocacy Council, these programs received funding in FY 2017 and FY 2018. Continued support for the programs in future years looks promising, although a likely decrease to the federal budget leaves them less than secure.

The National League of Cities is asking local public, private, and civic leaders to make new, measurable, and impactful commitments to increasing the adoption of technology, improving the climate for entrepreneurship, and expanding youth and adult opportunities in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) at the local level. By making a commitment, NLC invites cities to take part in its City Innovation Ecosystems program, which seeks to help local leaders achieve their goals by marketing and branding best practices, providing technical assistance, promoting peer learnings, and connecting cities to national private and philanthropic partners. NLC will highlight accepted commitments at its City Summit in Los Angeles from November 7-10.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) released updated Science and Engineering (S&E) State Profiles – an online portal that provides state-level rankings and totals of S&E data for the 50 states, District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. The portal also provides a data tool that allows users to compare up to seven states or download entire data sets. In the most recent update, NSF allows user to explore data for the years 2015 to 2017. S&T indicator by state include, but are not limited to:

• Gross domestic product, 2016;
• S&E doctorate recipients, 2016;
• Higher education R&D performance, 2016;
• Federal R&D obligations, 2016;
• State R&D expenditures, 2016;
• SBIR awards, 2016;
• Utility patents issued to state residents, 2016; and,
• Total R&D performance, 2015.

Over the last decade, accelerators have spread from a Silicon Valley phenomenon to communities across the country. Questions, however, remain on their impact on startups and whether they aid in creating a strong startup ecosystem. In How Do Accelerators Impact High-Technology Ventures?, Sandy Yu from UC-Berkeley found that the accelerator process helps resolve uncertainty around company quality sooner than what is experienced by non-accelerator companies. Uncertainty regarding the startup’s idea is resolved quicker due in part to the feedback effects of the accelerator process.

Each year, the National Science Foundation releases a report on Science and Engineering Indicators, a voluminous compilation of data and analysis that looks at metrics which are particularly relevant to the field of technology-based economic development. Beginning in 2020, future versions of Indicators could look very different from their predecessors, according to a presentation by NSF program director Beethika Khan.

In an executive order issued last month, President Trump wrote that the nation is facing a skills crisis. In response, and in order to develop “a national strategy to ensure that America’s students and workers have access to affordable, relevant, and innovative education and job training that will equip them to compete and win in the global economy,” the president established a National Council for the American Worker. That focus on skills and the future workforce was also present in two recent reports (one from the National Skills Coalition and the other from an independent task force of the Council on Foreign Relations [CFR]) urging action on the topic.

The Employment and Training Administration has published the availability of up to $100 million for Trade and Economic Transition National Dislocated Worker Grants (DWGs), with funding amounts of up to $8 million for each award. This grant will enable successful applicants to address ongoing or emerging workforce and economic challenges by providing training and career services to dislocated workers seeking reentry into the workforce, and increasing their skill levels to become competitive for growing or high-demand employment opportunities.

The deadline for all Economic Transition DWG application packages filed in response to this announcement www.grants.gov is September 7, 2018.

Approximately 30.2 percent of NIH-funded research studies produce false positive results that make those studies not replicable by other researchers, according to a recent study from researchers at Queensland University of Technology (AU). The authors of the study contend that the reproducibility crisis is driven by “publish or perish” incentives to increase the quantity of their papers at the cost of quality. They contend this publish or perish mentality is most prevalent at large, established “parent” labs (those with 50 or more NIH-funded papers). In these labs, established researchers, young researchers, and students are under pressure to publish their work leading to methodological and other process mistakes that create false positives and reduce reproducibility.

After considerable growth in the number of startups raising a first round of venture capital financing between 2009 and 2014, there has been a geographically widespread contraction, according to new research from Ian Hathaway at the Center of American Entrepreneurship, a D.C. based advocacy group. In America’s Rising Startup Communities, Hathaway explores the geography of first venture capital financing across U.S. metropolitan areas over the last eight years, finding that just 10 metro areas account for more than two-thirds of all first financings. From 2009 to 2017, the number of startups receiving a first financing increased by 84 percent, and more than one-third of regions saw an increase in deals.

On July 31, OMB Director Mike Mulvaney distributed a memo outlining eight priority R&D subjects and five practices for leveraging R&D resources more effectively. The White House intends for the memo to serve as guidance in the development of budget submissions from the executive departments and agencies for FY 2020.  Basic and applied research are to be emphasized in the agency R&D plans, which would be a shift from data on recent trends released by the National Science Foundation the day before the Mulvaney memo. NSF found that the development side of R&D in the FY 2017 federal R&D obligations, passed in May of the first year of the Trump administration, increased by 7 percent from the year prior, while research expenditures actually declined by 3 percent.

The research priorities for FY 2020, according to the new OMB memo, should be:

The emerging blockchain industry has recently caught the attention of some state political leaders and economic development officials as a potential driver of economic growth as well as a potential solution to improve government services. To support economic growth, states are working on creating flexible regulatory sandboxes to allow blockchain-based startups to test their products. The states also hope to position themselves as destinations for startup growth in the nascent industry. Other states have started to adopt blockchain technologies to assist in the provision of services to their citizens.

Blockchain regulatory sandboxes

Due to the emergent nature of blockchain technology and its potential impact on the financial, insurance, and legal services industries, several states are working to develop the regulatory framework to protect consumers while allowing the industry to grow. Recent announcements include: