SSTI Digest

The National Science Foundation (NSF), in partnership with NASA, the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Agriculture awarded nearly $50 million to grantees for the development and use of robots that cooperatively work with people to enhance individual human capabilities, performance and safety. These awards mark the first round of awards of the Obama administration's National Robotics Initiative (NRI), a federal program established in 2011 to spur innovative robotics research and applications emphasizing the realization of co-robots acting in direct support of and in a symbiotic relationship with human partners. Awardees represented universities from across the country including Arizona State University, Carnegie-Melon University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Idaho State University, Michigan State University, Stanford University and the University of Utah. Read the press release...

NSF and its partners also released a new $15 million funding announcement for the National Robotics Initiative to support up to 40 new robotics research projects across two funding tracks:

During a lively discussion session — Recent Federal Efforts: What's Happened, What's Working and What Should Change — SSTI will bring together the members of the economic development community to review what the federal government has done, how it has worked for the tech-based economic development community, and what changes should be made to improve the federal programs. Whether it's multi-agency initiatives such as the i6 Challenge Jobs and Innovation Accelerator Challenge or single agency activity at the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, and the Small Business Administration, the federal government's involvement in encouraging economic growth through science, technology and innovation has escalated in recent years. This session will give you the opportunity to share your thoughts on their successes, failures and what they can do better. Learn more about this session by visiting the conference website.

llinois Gov. Pat Quinn has announced the details of a $10.3 million planned partnership to develop "STEM Learning Exchanges" across the state. Eight organizations will be awarded contracts to work with regional, educational and business networks to aggregate curricular resources, assessment tools, professional development systems, work-based learning opportunities and problem-based learning challenges. Funding for the initiative will be drawn from $2.3 million in federal Race to the Top funds, with another $8 million leveraged from private partnerships. Learn more...

On September 17, 2012, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) implemented seven provisions of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act of 2011 (AIA) including:

To reflect an evolving mission that expands the scope of genomics research, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced a major reorganization that will establish four new divisions to constitute the National Genome Research Institute's Extramural Research Program. The multi-divisional structure will help the institute pursue its enhanced mission for using genomics to advance medical science and improve human health, which has become a greater focus from its original mission to unravel the Human Genome, according to NIH. Read the press release...

Responding to Gov. Nathan Deal's Complete College Georgia initiative launched last year, all of the state's institutions in the University System and Technical College System have submitted plans for how they will meet the governor's goal of adding 250,000 post-secondary graduates to the state by 2020. For Georgia's research universities, graduating more students translates to more workers prepared to enter careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. Some of the strategies include enhancing instructional delivery and improving access for underrepresented groups and military veterans.

Each of the institutions was tasked with developing plans that addressed data collection and analysis to identify areas for improvement, partnerships with K-12 to improve readiness, access to college, the reduction of time to earn a degree, new models of instruction and learning, and the transformation of remediation.

U.S. economic policy will require a renewed focus on production and globally traded sectors in order to restore U.S. competitiveness, according to a new report from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF). Furthering the argument laid out in the recently published book Innovation Economics: The Race for Global Advantage and in last year's report "The Case for a National Manufacturing Strategy", ITIF's Stephen J. Ezell and Robert D. Atkinson present 50 recommendations for federal reform to restore the U.S.' competitive edge. In addition, the report provides another 13 strategies that could make a difference at the state level.

The quarterly deadline for submitting grant applications to the Economic Development Administration's (EDA) Public Works and Economic Adjustment Assistance programs has been extended from Friday, September 14, 2012, to Thursday, September 20, 2012. This extension covers only the first funding cycle of FY13 and does not affect other EDA grant application deadlines. More information...

Utah Governor Gary Herbert announced a new public-private partnership that will establish the Salt Lake City region as a top ten center for technology jobs and businesses. To achieve this goal, the state plans to undertake a statewide planning process to identify and build on current successes and create greater collaboration in Science Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) education. The statewide STEM education and workforce partnership is a collaborative project of the Governor's Office of Economic Development, the Utah System of Higher Education, the Utah State Office of Education and Prosperity 2020 — a business-led movement to advance educational investment and innovation within the state. The state hopes that by 2020:

• 66 percent of Utahns will have post-secondary certificates and degrees;
• 90 percent of Utah elementary students will be proficient in reading and math; and,
• The greater Salt Lake area will be a top ten center for technology jobs and businesses.

Read the press release...

The old adage "change is inevitable" rings especially true for economic development practitioners who must not only adapt to changes, but anticipate them and employ the best methods to capitalize on new opportunities. SSTI's conference session, Re-Orienting Your Organization for Today's Economy, pulls together three organizations at the local, state and federal level to examine how they have re-oriented their work to reflect the changing economy and the needs of their clients. Perhaps no other state has undergone such a rapid transformation in the TBED field as Michigan in the last couple of years. Like many states with newly elected governors at the start of 2011, Michigan has been working to retool its approach to economic development through economic gardening and a focus on regionalism. During the session, Michael A. Finney, President & CEO of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, will talk about how the state implemented its new regional strategy and report on early successes resulting from big investments, such as the $8 billion, multi-year Pure Michigan Business Connect initiative.

Governors and policymakers working toward economic development reform are in a unique position to propose critical changes that would not have been feasible in the past and gain broad support for transforming economic development agencies to better meet the needs of businesses, according to a new white paper from the National Governors Association (NGA). NGA has identified three major challenges states are facing and three foundational strategies to increase effectiveness of state economic development agencies.

Challenges include the rise of global competition, structural inefficiencies in state economic development agencies and strained budgets for years to come. Alongside these challenges, state commerce departments are not designed well for the young and fast-growing businesses that are fueling most of the new job growth, NGA finds. Collaboration, private sector involvement and instituting a qualitative evaluation system are noted as promising strategies for increasing effectiveness of economic development agencies. Read the paper...

As U.S. politicians turn their eyes towards this year's election season, governments around the world continue to focus their efforts on increasing national global competitiveness. Over the past couple months, Australia, China and New Zealand have announced government initiatives to spur innovation, revitalize domestic manufacturing and support R&D.

Australia
The Australian government announced a new report, Smarter Manufacturing for a Smarter Australia, proposing a public-private partnership to establish a shared vision for the future of the country's manufacturing sector. Compiled by non-government members of the Prime Minister's Taskforce on Manufacturing, it identities a five point agenda to build the global competitiveness of its manufacturing base including: