The Commerce Department has suspended plans to announce a funding opportunity for the construction, modernization, or expansion of commercial semiconductor R&D facilities, according to an announcement the CHIPS Program Office made in their newsletter last week. The suspension does not impact the $11 billion the CHIPS Program Office still plans to spend on semiconductor R&D through separate R&D programs, nor does it affect the awards for incentive program funding opportunities already announced.

A report from ITIF exploring the factors involved in ecosystem strength found that states in Germany generally perform better than states in the U.S., Italy, and Canada in terms of globalization, knowledge economy, and innovation capacity.

Despite COVID-induced setbacks continuing to keep some people out of offices and laboratories, new Business Enterprise Research and Development Survey (BERD) data reveals that domestic research and development (R&D) spending, although slowing, is still on an uptrend.

A new report compiled by The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) outlines a whole-of-government approach to biotechnology and making it a national priority.

While the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 was passed more than five years ago, many businesses seem to be just discovering the effects of one of its sections this tax season. The law stipulated that, for tax years beginning in 2022, companies could no longer choose to expense their entire “research and experimentation” costs in one year and must instead amortize those cost over five years (with a half year look-back).

The House and Senate are working toward FY 2024 appropriations, but not even a negotiated agreement has kept the chambers moving in the same direction. Today, the Senate appropriations committee directed its subcommittees to produce bills that align with the slight reduction in non-defense spending agreed to in the debt ceiling agreement reached earlier this month.

For the last 40 years, higher education has been the dominant performer of basic research in the United States, but there has been a slide in higher education’s share over the last 20 years as businesses have increased their performance of basic R&D (Figure 1). If the current trendline continues, businesses will soon surpass higher education as basic R&D performers and become the predominant basic R&D performer just as they have been in applied R&D for decades.

Higher education R&D expenditures, while continuing to steadily increase, have not grown evenly across state lines. This matters to successful TBED policymakers because a strong R&D enterprise within a state’s public and private institutions of higher education can and should provide a consistent source of skilled workers, new technology, and sources for innovation-driven business growth. So where is R&D growing?

Readers may have noticed the most populous states end up topping many of the statistical tables related to economic development. Normalizing the data by some relevant, related measure can provide a higher quality look that is a little closer to the “apples to apples” appeal that might help influence some policy issues. For this week’s edition of Useful Stats, SSTI is exploring research intensity as a component of state gross domestic product (GDP) and the research load “carried” by each member of the R&D personnel within the state’s higher education community.

Higher education R&D (HERD) expenditures have steadily increased over time. They’ve soared past $100 billion in the most recent data year, fiscal year (FY) 2023, growing in every state. However, the gains are not shared equally in all fields of research.

As this week’s recent research article mentions, R&D tax credits work, so it isn’t surprising several states have either proposed, amended, or enacted research and development (R&D) tax credits for both the current fiscal (2025) and new (2026) fiscal year in efforts to encourage innovation and economic growth. Some specifically target life sciences or biotechnology sectors while others focus on attracting new or existing companies and startups or to further develop life sciences and/or biotech sectors and hubs.

The most recent  Higher Education R&D (HERD) survey revealed the largest year-over-year percentage increase in higher education R&D since 2002 to 2003 and dollar increase across all fiscal years (FYs) captured by the survey. HERD expenditures breached the $100 billion mark in 2023, having grown 11% from $97.8 billion in 2022 to $108.8 billion in 2023 (7% in constant 2017 dollars, from $82.9 to $89 billion).

Western democracies are losing the race for scientific and research breakthroughs, and the ability to retain global talent, integral ingredients in developing technologies, according to a recent report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI). In the project funded by the U.S.

The U.S. National Science Foundation announced a new $60 million investment led by NSF's Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships — the Accelerating Research Translation, or ART, program. The program will build capacity and infrastructure at higher education institutions that are needed to strengthen and scale the translation of basic research outcomes into impactful solutions and practice.

Despite the pandemic and accompanying global economic slowdown in 2020 and 2021, U.S. business spending on research and development (R&D) activities increased by nearly $65 billion (12%), rising from $538 billion in 2020 to $602 billion in 2021. This increase was led by a $61 billion, or 13% increase, in R&D paid for by the company, compared to a $3 billion, 5% increase, in R&D paid for by others.

The Department of Defense recently awarded six Defense Manufacturing Community Support Program (DMCSP) grants totaling approximately $30 million from the Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation (OLDCC). The DMCSP invests long-term in critical skills, facilities, workforce development, research and development, and small business support to strengthen the national security innovation base.

While both gross domestic product (GDP) and population have steadily increased across the United States over the last decade, the growth of business enterprise R&D (BERD) expenditures has surged ahead at an even faster pace.

Manufacturing industries accounted for approximately $372 billion, or 54%, of all domestic business enterprise R&D (BERD) expenditures in 2022, up 36% from $274 billion in 2018. Despite this increase of nearly $100 billion over the past five years, the share of BERD expenditures in manufacturing industries has decreased eight percentage points from its 2018 value of 62%.

The European Union is engaged in a debate about changing its systems for R&D funding, the first potentially significant changes since its current framework program began in 1984. A group of 15 individuals from research and industry selected by the European Commission last year has submitted a report, Align, act, accelerate, which gives recommendations for overhauling the system.

Domestic business R&D expenditures have jumped 15% ($89 billion) from 2021 to 2022. This jump continues a decade-long trend of year-over-year increases, as a new 2022 Business Enterprise R&D (BERD) survey shows.

As business R&D expenditures continue to increase nationwide, disparities between states deepen, an SSTI analysis of new Business Enterprise Research and Development (BERD) survey data reveals.

A previous Digest article gave a broad overview of the most recent survey of Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) for FY 2021 (the most recent data available), including a breakdown of what field of studies receive the most R&D funding.

Microbusinesses (businesses with 1-9 domestic employees) spent $7.5 billion in both domestic and foreign R&D expenditures or costs in 2020, of which $6.7 billion was in the U.S. Of this total, $5.6 billion was performed by microbusinesses themselves, according to the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) and data from the Annual Business Survey (ABS). The $5.6 billion performed by U.S.

In fiscal year (FY) 2023, federal obligations for science and engineering (S&E) to universities and colleges totaled $49 billion—$29 billion more than FY 2000, and a 10% increase from the prior year. The growth is less rapid when adjusted for inflation (2017 USD), with just over $40 billion in real obligations in FY 2023, a 5% increase over the year prior and $12.6 billion (or 46%) increase over the FY 2000 value.

A recently published InfoChart from the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) presents an annotated walk through federal R&D obligations from FY 1951 through 2024, explaining key events influencing key moments in the surges and downswings along the nation’s path to supporting discovery, research, development and innovation. The data is presented in constant 2017 dollars.