SSTI Digest

With several of the right elements already in place but scattered across a wide area, the two planning districts comprising the 13-county region surrounding Roanoke, Virginia, combined efforts to develop a strategic economic development strategy that focuses heavily on science and technology-based initiatives.

The Alliance Group and its Planning Leadership Group, a team of public, private and academic stakeholder organizations, have outlined six strategic themes that entail regional economic development activities for the larger region: visibility, connectivity, quality-of-life amenities, knowledge work force, innovation and entrepreneurship, and economic transformation. The next steps, the group asserts, are to communicate the goals of the Strategy throughout the region and manage the necessary resources for enacting the goals.

The importance of strong academic R&D capabilities in building state and regional tech-based economies cannot be overstated. Subsequently most states, either independently or in partnership with federal EPSCoR programs, are making investments toward strengthening their academic research enterprises. Some also have invested in programs to attract, leverage or match federal R&D investments.

One of the latest InfoBriefs from the National Science Foundation outlines trends over 30 years in federal and non-federal support for academic R&D. While federal spending for academic R&D grew by an inflation adjusted 180 percent between 1972 and 2000, the findings reveal federal support played a diminishing role compared to non-federal sources, which grew by nearly 350 percent during the period. Federal R&D expenditures represented only 58.2 percent of total academic R&D support in 2000.

Anne Armstrong, president of Virginia's Center for Innovative Technology since 1999, has resigned from the position effective the end of this month. Virginia Secretary of Technology George C. Newstrom will serve as Interim President during a search for a new president.

Robert Templin, Jr., has been named the new president of Northern Virginia Community College, effective August 17. Templin, currently a senior fellow at the Morino Institute, was a previous president of Virginia' Center for Innovative Technology.

Virginia is one of the most connected states in the country with 5.19 million access lines, 2.76 million wireless telephone subscribers and 218,808 high-speed lines, according to a report issued by Virginia’s Center for Innovative Technology (CIT). State of the Telecommunications Industry in Virginia analyzes the state of the national and local telecom industry and identifies the key drivers of Virginia’s success in attracting telecommunications companies, focusing on the industry during the latter part of 2001 and the first half of 2002.

The report states that, with the national telecommunications industry in turmoil, further consolidation is inevitable. Between March 2000 and February 2002, more than $1 trillion in market value in the telecom industry was lost, and more than 300,000 people in the industry lost their jobs. In addition, the telecom industry recovery will lag the rest of the economy by 18-24 months.

The National Science Foundation has released a new set of statistical tables that show research and development (R&D) funding levels, reported by 31 federal agencies for the last three fiscal years.

Federal Funds for Research and Development: Fiscal Years 2000, 2001, and 2002 offers R&D totals in terms of both outlays and obligations. The R&D obligation data are categorized according to character of work (basic research, applied research, and development), performer, field of science or engineering (for research but not for development), and federal R&D funding by state. The report also shows obligations for research performance at colleges and universities by fields of science or engineering, and additional data is given for R&D plant.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has published the Science & Engineering State Profiles: 1999-2000, an online database. One-page statistical summaries are given for each state, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico, permitting calculation of per capita statistics and rankings.

The report is geared to allow easy reference across 30 science and engineering statistics, the distribution of federal R&D obligations by department and performer, and industrial and academic R&D expenditures. Additionally, it includes figures for population, per capita income, labor force, patents, small business innovation research awards, and gross state product.

Industrial R&D intensity — measured by the ratio of industry R&D to Gross State Product (GSP) — can be a useful S&T indicator, because it indicates the level of private sector R&D activity and standardizes the data to eliminate geographic, demographic, historical, and natural resource differences among the states.  With the recent release of the National Science Foundation's Survey of Industrial Research and Development: 1999, SSTI has constructed a table presenting the data and state rankings for industrial R&D intensity for 1997-1999, the three latest years available.  The top five states for each year and their scores are: 

1997

1998

1999

George Newstrom was sworn in as the Virginia Secretary of Technology. Newstrom succeeds Don Upson, who is returning to the private sector for technology consulting.

With the goal of supporting partnerships that unite the efforts of local school districts with science, mathematics, engineering and education faculties of colleges and universities, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has released the first request for proposals (RFP) for the $160 million Math & Science Partnerships (MSP) initiative. Involvement of additional stakeholders, especially states, is highly encouraged, according to the RFP. The program seeks to improve student outcomes in high-quality mathematics and science at all levels, from pre-K to 12. By stressing partnerships, MSP emphasizes that mathematicians, scientists and engineers participate in the effort to impact the teacher workforce and to work with teachers and administrators to substantially improve student achievement. NSF expects teachers and higher education faculty, as well as administrators and school guidance counselors, to be significantly involved in proposal development and program implementation.

While 2002 marks the 20th anniversary of the creation of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program, it also may be remembered as the first time an agency successfully finagled its way out of SBIR's requirement that 2.5 percent of extramural R&D be awarded to small technology companies.

SSTI sources report the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) managed to insert in the FY 2002 Defense Appropriations Act language rescinding 49.6 percent — $73.8 million — of the agency's SBIR obligation for FY 2002.

The SBIR program typically awards up to $750,000 directly to small firms for research and development leading to the commercialization of new technologies. BMDO is one of eight defense components required to participate in the small-business set-aside.

To create new research centers in FY 2003, the National Science Foundation (NSF) is offering approximately $26 million through its Engineering Research Centers (ERC) Program.  At least two awards totaling up to $13 million each will be made. The awards, subject to 10 percent cost sharing, will be distributed as follows: $2.5 million (year 1), $3 million (year 2), $3.5 million (year 3), and $4 million (years 4 and 5).  Each new center will focus on the definition, fundamental understanding, development, and validation of the technologies needed to realize a well-defined class of engineered systems with the potential to spawn whole new industries or radically transform the product lines, processing technologies, or service delivery methodologies of current industries.