SSTI Digest

Last week, Indiana Governor Frank O'Bannon named the Board of Directors to oversee the design and administration of the new 21st Century Research & Technology Fund. By law, the Lieutenant Governor serves as chairman for the board.

Earlier this summer, the Indiana General Assembly approved a budget for the initiative of $50 million for the next two years for the initiative. This level of funding, coupled with the existing programs of the Indiana Business Modernization Technology Corp. (BMT), moves Indiana into the top tier of states investing in technology-based economic development.

The 21st Century Research and Technology Fund is to provide grants and loans that support economic development by addressing one or more of the following goals:

Small companies' interests in developing environmental technologies appear to growing. Between 1998 and 1999, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) saw a 64 percent increase in the number of SBIR Phase I proposals submitted. The number of awards made by the agency was unable to keep pace, growing by only 30 percent. As a result, EPA was able to fund less than 9 percent of the 535 SBIR Phase I proposals received in 1999. In 1998, more than 11 percent of the proposals were funded.

The accompanying table presents the distribution of EPA awards and proposals by state.

Abstracts of EPA awards for the 1999 SBIR Phase I solicitation have not been posted on their website currently but should be soon. The web address is: http://es.epa.gov/ncerqa/sbir/

Taratec Corporation of Columbus, Ohio has been awarded a $44,500 contract from the Department of Commerce's Office of Technology Policy (OTP) to prepare a report of science & technology indicators for all 50 states. The indicators are intended to assist Commerce in evaluating the impact and outcome of projects funded by the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Technology (EPSCoT) as well as other OTP programmatic improvements.

The solicitation, released in early July says the report will be completed for Commerce in 18 weeks (refer to the 7/2/99 SSTI Weekly Digest Addendum for more details). Commerce will be responsible for any further publication and distribution.

For more information, contact Anita Balachandra with the EPSCoT program at 202/482-8004 or by email at Anita_Balachandra@ta.doc.gov

The September 3, 1999 issue of the SSTI Weekly Digest contained some errors in the SBIR tables. The correct information is below. Revised tables are available for review on our website at:  http://www.ssti.org/Digest/Tables/090399t.htm

In the Department of Education's SBIR Phase II awards, the totals for Michigan and Minnesota were inadvertently switched. There were no Phase II proposals received nor awards made to Michigan firms this year. Minnesota firms submitted two proposals, both of which were selected for Phase II funding.

U.S. Department of Commerce Secretary William Daley has labeled as Amisleading@ a press release issued by the House Science Committee regarding the proposal review and selection criteria of the Advanced Technology Program (ATP). [See August 27, 1999 issue of SSTI Weekly Digest.] In the release, Rep. Sensenbrenner, the Chairman of the Committee, questioned the program's commitment to ensuring federal grants were not displacing private capital.

The Department of Commerce disputes that criticism.

"With respect to ensuring that project applicants adequately demonstrate the need for Federal funding, the ATP requires applicants to provide convincing assurances at several stages in the review process,@ said Daley in a letter to Rep. Sensenbrenner. AATP rejects proposals that fail to make a convincing argument that the work could not be entirely funded by industry."

The Kentucky Science and Technology Corp. (KSTC) has released Kentucky's Science and Technology Strategy, a plan outlining ten specific recommendations in four strategic areas to guide the Commonwealth's future R&D investments. If implemented, the recommendations are expected to have significant impact in just a few years.

The four key strategic areas include enterprise development, manufacturing modernization, technological infrastructure, and people. The recommendations and their estimated annual costs are listed below. Most will require passage of new legislation by the Kentucky General Assembly in their next session.

The recommendations are:

NASA has announced the selection of 103 R&D projects to share approximately $62 million as Phase II recipients under the agency's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program. The 103 awards were chosen from 319 proposals submitted by promising NASA 1998 SBIR Phase I recipients.

Ninety firms in 27 states won the 103 Phase II awards. Each project may receive up to $600,000 over two years to support their Phase II efforts.

The accompanying table presents the distribution by state of awards to proposals, the conversion percentage, and the number of firms selected. More detailed information on NASA's selections may be found on the NASA SBIR website: http://sbir.hq.nasa.gov/.

The U.S. Department of Education's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program has announced approximately $3.2 million has been awarded through the 1999 SBIR solicitation. The agency funded 40 Phase I projects, totaling nearly $2 million, from 208 proposals received from companies across 40 states. An additional $1.2 million was awarded to ten Phase II projects selected from a pool of 34 proposals. The accompanying table presents the distribution of proposals and awards by state. No proposals were received from firms in those ten states omitted from the table.

More information on Education's 1999 SBIR awards, including research topics and specific information for each awardee, may be found at http://www.ed.gov/offices/OERI/SBIR/

Before Congress left for its August break, the House voted 217-210 to pass the Commerce-State-Justice Appropriation Bill. Among other items, the Bill (H.R. 2670) eliminates all funding for the Advanced Technology Program (ATP). With this zeroing-out of funding for ATP, NIST’s total appropriation would be $436.7 million, $300.3 million below the request of $735.0 million, and $210.5 million below FY1999 funding of $647.2 million.

The House Appropriations Committee report submitted with the bill says that after many years in existence, ATP has not produced a body of evidence to overcome fundamental questions about whether the program should exist in the first place. Given the tremendous financial constraints under which the Committee is operating, the Committee concludes that funding would be better spent on other higher priority programs and recommends that the ATP program be terminated.

This year’s second attempt to pass legislation establishing a state-funded seed capital program in Missouri was successful during the waning hours of the 1999 session of the Missouri General Assembly. SB 518, the Missouri New Enterprise Creation Act, authorizes the creation of up to four seed capital funds at the state’s innovation centers to support new technology-based companies in the state. Funding for the program will be generated through $20 million in tax credits, with a maximum limit of $5 million in credits each year.

The legislation calls for a state seed capital and commercialization strategy to be developed and approved by a yet-to-be-established Missouri Seed Capital Investment Board prior to the creation of the seed capital funds. One fund is exempted from this provision and will be started immediately to assist any of the up to 7,000 Missourians to be laid off by the Boeing Corporation over the next two years.

NASA has named 20 companies from 13 states as recipients of the agency’s 1999 Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Program Phase I solicitation. NASA received 82 proposals from 59 companies in this year’s competition. Each selected project will receive a fixed-price, one-year contract with NASA for up to $100,000. Successful Phase I recipients may compete for two-year Phase II contracts of up to $500,000 next year. All STTR awards involve partnerships between the selected companies and research institutions. While the small business is the recipient of the award, a minimum of 30 percent of the research must be completed at the research institution, and the small business must perform at least 40 percent.

Vice President Gore has announced the creation of an interagency task force to recommend ways to strengthen the U.S. manufacturing sector for the 21st century. Gene Sperling, director of the National Economic Council, will lead the group, charged with presenting specific recommendations on how government policies and programs can preserve and enhance American manufacturing.

The work of the Manufacturing Task Force is to be completed by early next year, providing time to incorporate any recommendations for changes into the Administration’s FY 2001 budget request. Other federal agencies serving on the task force were not identified in the Vice President’s announcement.