SSTI Digest

Occurring on the first Friday of October, Manufacturing (MFG) Day is October 7 this year. MFG Day is an annual event that showcases the strength of American manufacturing, as well as those who produce its goods and services, and which continues to advance the new technologies that grow the U.S. economy, create jobs, and keeps the nation competitive globally.  It empowers manufacturers across the nation to come together to address their collective challenges, highlight their successes, and illustrate how they can help their communities thrive. Last year more than 2,600 events were held with some 400,000 visitors participating.

MFG Day, first observed in 2011, started as a grassroots movement that co-partnered with industry-leading organizations such as the Fabricators & Manufacturing Association, International (FMA), the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), the Manufacturing Institute (MI), and the National Institute of Standards & Technology’s (NIST) Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) to draw the public’s attention to both manufacturing and its career opportunities

The U.S. Census Bureau announced on Tuesday that median household income increased to $56,516 in 2015, a jump of 5.2 percent from the 2014 median income of $53,718 and the first increase since 2007.  However, real median household income in 2015 was 1.6 percent lower than in 2007, the year before the Great Recession, and 2.4 percent lower than the median household income peak, which occurred in 1999. Ten states (HI, KY, MT, NH, OR, RI, TN, VT, WI and WY) and the District of Columbia saw median household incomes increase by more than 5 percent, although with the margin of error it is possible that some of these states saw increases of less than 1 percent, according to data presented in Table 1 of Household Income: 2015. Only Puerto Rico saw the median household income decline from 2014 levels; ID and NJ saw increases of less than 1 percent. The U.S.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced the recipients of 37 Design and Development Launch Pilots as part of its INCLUDES initiative. NSF INCLUDES invests in alliances and partnerships that seek to broaden STEM participation among underrepresented groups, including women, Hispanics, African Americans, Native Americans, persons with disabilities, people from rural areas and people of low socioeconomic status. The program was originally developed as a response to a 2013 report by the congressionally mandated NSF Committee on Equal Opportunities in Science and Engineering (CEOSE), which recommended a new initiative focused on broadening participation of underrepresented groups in STEM. 

As the school year kicks off, several corporate foundations have announced new commitments to support hands-on K-12 science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) experiences for children across the country. These new partnerships continue a trend of corporate funders bypassing funding for STEM curriculum development to focus on active learning experiences that are shown to have positive impact on STEM retention. Among the corporate foundations making announcements include Microsoft Philanthropies, Motorola Solutions Foundation, and Qualcomm.

On September 2, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced $7.2 million in funding for the newly established Texas Industry Cluster Innovative Academies. An element of Gov. Abbott’s Tri-Agency Workforce Initiative established in March 2016, the initiative will provide competitive grant funding to establish Innovative Academies within Texas high schools to provide students with learning opportunities in high-demand occupations while earning college course credit prior to high school graduation.

The Communities That Work Partnership, a national project to support industry-led workforce development efforts, has released seven case studies highlighting what it considers to be best practices for regions seeking ways to strengthen talent pipelines for local employers and improve access to quality employment for jobseekers. Launched in April 2015 by the Aspen Institute Workforce Strategies Initiative and the Economic Development Administration, with additional support from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, the partnership has two goals: to accelerate regional economic development through peer learning, and to document stories of how regional teams can improve links between the demand side and supply side of regional systems.

The National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), established in 2001 as a collaboration of 20 federal agencies and cabinet-level departments with an interest in nanotechnology R&D and commercialization, has released a draft of its 2016 strategic plan. The National Nanotechnology Initiative Strategic Plan, which describes the initiative’s vision and goals as well as potential strategies to achieve these goals. The plan is an update to and a replacement of a plan originally released in December 2013. Prior to the new plan’s official publication, the public is encouraged to submit comments online by September 23, 2016.

To improve private sector partnerships and increase commercialization efforts, the national labs should consider establishing external nonprofit entities to manage their commercialization efforts, according to a new report from Innovation Associates Inc. Supported by Argonne National Laboratory, the report – Enhancing National Laboratory Partnership and Commercialization Opportunities – highlights elements of several models that the author contends will improve U.S. economic prosperity by increasing the effectiveness of technology transfer and commercialization of technologies developed by the national laboratories as well as developing vital industry partnerships.

In August, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced over $40 million in available federal funding for a new DHS Center of Excellence (COE) for Homeland Security Quantitative Analysis via two federal funding opportunities (FFO). DHS will commit up to $40 million to an institution of higher education to act as the lead center for a network of COEs. In addition, DHS also is accepting applications for potential partners to work with the lead institution in support of the center’s activities. The proposed COEs will conduct end user-focused research to enhance the application of analytic tools that support real-time decision making and address homeland security-related threats and hazards. The deadline for submitting proposals is November 1.

Over the last month, the Economic Development Administration (EDA) announced over $8 million in grants to expand entrepreneurial and business support services in Alabama, New York, and Texas including:

Researchers of American entrepreneurship now have a timelier socio-economic portrait of the nation’s employer-owned businesses as a result of a public-private partnership between the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Minority Business Development Agency, and the Kauffman Foundation. Last week, data from the first Annual Survey of Entrepreneurs were made publicly available, which provides a detailed picture of the American entrepreneur in 2014 by examining race, ethnicity, gender, and geography. A brief released by the Census Bureau notes that more than 480,000 firms with paid employees (roughly 8.9 percent) of the 5.4 million U.S. firms with paid employees in 2014 had been in business for less than two years, according to the recent Annual Survey of Entrepreneurs data.

Immigrant entrepreneurs would be allowed to remain in the United States for an initial period of up to two years, and, conditional upon meeting certain benchmarks, could potentially stay in the country for one additional period of up to three years under a newly proposed rule by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) branch of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). As part of the International Entrepreneur Rule, which is now open for a 45-day comment period, certain international entrepreneurs would have an opportunity to start or scale their businesses in the United States. In an official blog post by White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Deputy Director for Technology and Innovation Tom Kalil and Assistant Director for Entrepreneurship Doug Rand, the authors note that the new reform would propose clear criteria to identify those entrepreneurs with the potential to provide significant public benefit to the United States. Evaluating entrepreneurs on a case-by-case basis, the proposed rule would consider factors such as: the entrepreneur’s ownership stake (at least 15 percent) and leadership role in the startup; the growth potential of the startup; competitive research grants of at least $100,000 from federal, state, and local government agencies provided to the firm; and the investment of at least $345,000 by qualified American investors.