The National Science Foundation (NSF) estimates that U.S. research and development (R&D) funding reached an all-time high of $499.3 billion in 2015 – an increase of approximately $21.6 billion over 2014 levels ($477.7 billion). The $21.6 billion increase marks the third time in three years that overall U.S. R&D funding grew by more than $20 billion – $20.4 billion in 2013 and $21.1 billion in 2014.

U.S. companies spent 18 percent of their research and development dollars outside of the United States in 2013, according to data recently released by the NSF. The $73 billion in foreign R&D is concentrated in the information industry, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, and automobiles and parts. Those four industries accounted for 52 percent of all foreign R&D performance by U.S.

The U.S. House Science Committee released a letter last week reasserting the majority party’s interest in setting R&D priorities for federal science agencies and supporting appropriation levels that generally align with the White House’s budget blueprint. The letter notes priorities for most of the $42 billion in R&D budgets within the committee’s purview.

In part one of two, SSTI will examine NIH’s proposed changes that will place limits on individual researcher funding.

On May 2, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that it intends to implement a new approach to grant funding with the purpose of increasing the number of researchers receiving grants. These proposed changes are due to a highly skewed distribution of NIH funding with 10 percent of NIH-funded investigators receiving over 40 percent of funding. NIH intends to roll out specific policies and procedures as part of the new approach – titled the Grant Support Index (GSI) – that will assess effectiveness of NIH research investments. During this time, NIH also will seek feedback from on how best to implement the individual grant funding limits.

Michigan’s University Research Corridor, an alliance of Michigan State University, the University of Michigan and Wayne State University, conducted $1.2 billion in academic R&D in the life, medical and health sciences, and served as a stabilizing force to the state’s economy as one of the only sectors that grew during the 2000s. Those are among the findings of the 2017 URC sector report, which was prepared by Public Sector Consultants. The report, Leading Discovery: URC Contributions to the Life, Medical and Health Sciences, notes that employment in the life, medical and health sciences sector, which accounts for one in eight jobs in Michigan, is up 18.9 percent since 2000, compared to overall Michigan employment, which is down 9.3 percent.

Although it has been slated for elimination under the president’s proposed budget, the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) program is making progress toward achieving its statutory mission and goals, and it “cannot reasonably be expected to have completely fulfilled those goals given so few years of operation and the size of its budget.” That is among the findings released this week by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) in its assessment of ARPA-E. The project was overseen by the Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy (STEP) and was tasked with assessing ARPA-E’s progress toward achieving its statutory mission and goals, and determining whether it is on a trajectory to achieve them. In short, the answer is that it is.

Because a research base that generates new knowledge is a key pillar of a technology-based economy, an important strategy in technology-based economic development is the expansion of research capacity. While states may go about addressing this in a variety of ways (e.g., R&D tax-credits, university-industry partnerships, recruiting eminent scholars), Florida drew national attention when it took a different approach last decade, allocating more than $450 million to attract nine research institutes through its Innovation Incentive Program (IIP).

After the last American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) obligations ran out in FY10, federal obligations for science and engineering at U.S. universities and colleges fell by 11 percent, according to the National Science Foundation (NSF).  Between FY2010-11, federal agency obligations fell by $31.4 billion in current dollars, though excluding ARRA funds, obligations actually rose by $1.2 billion. R&D obligations fell 10.6 percent, a decline that had its largest impact on funding for R&D-related equipment, facilities and land.

When the U.S. government made their R&D tax credit permanent in December 2015, it made a long-term commitment to using incentives to entice private firms to invest in research and development, joining many countries around the world. Although most studies find that R&D tax incentives promote R&D, there is little consensus on the extent of this effect. A recent firm-level analysis from the United Kingdom finds some of the strongest evidence to date on the effectiveness of R&D tax credits in incentivizing innovation. At the same time, however, other studies suggest other elements of a national economy such as education and infrastructure may be more important.

U.S. companies continue to emphasize innovation, as private performance of R&D increased for the fourth consecutive year, according to recently released data from the National Science Foundation. In total, U.S. businesses performed 6.7 percent more R&D in 2013 than in 2012, according to the data, and nearly 19 percent more R&D from 2010 to 2013. Combined, the top 10 states performed approximately two-thirds (65.3 percent) of all private research and development in the United States, led by California, whose $89.4 billion in corporate R&D performance accounted for 27.7 percent of the national total.

Nearly half of the U.S. states and the District of Columbia saw a 10 percent or greater increase in higher education R&D expenditures from FY 2010 to FY 2015 with five of those states (Connecticut, Georgia, Massachusetts, Nebraska, and Utah) seeing at least a 20 percent change, according to the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) survey for 2015. Between FY10-15 overall U.S. research and development (R&D) spending at U.S.

The 21st Century Cures Act was signed by President Obama on Tuesday and is broadly intended to facilitate the research, development and transfer of medical discoveries in order to better-address diseases affecting American people. While the bill has received mainstream coverage for its bipartisanship – the core authors were two Democrats and two Republicans – and billions in new research spending – more than $5 billion in authorizations – the text also contains potentially significant changes for federally-supported medical research policy.

This week, we take a look at the top SSTI Weekly Digest stories from 2016 and give you an idea of what to look for in the coming months.

U.S. research and development (R&D) performance rose to $477.7 billion in 2014 – an increase of $21.1 billion over 2013, according to a recent National Science Foundation (NSF) InfoBrief. When adjusted for inflation, growth in U.S. total R&D performance (1.2 percent annually between 2008 and 2014) matched the average pace of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP).

State and local governments invested $3.8 billion in R&D at institutions of higher education in FY 2015, with the top ten states accounting for $2.3 billion – roughly 59.4 percent of overall spending, according to an SSTI analysis of NSF data. From FY 2011 to FY 2015, total spending remained relatively unchanged (0.1 percent decrease). Over that same period, colleges and universities in 25 states reported increased expenditures from state governments, while 25 and the District of Columbia reported declines.

For the first time in five years, federal funding for higher education research and development increased in both current and constant dollars, according to recently released data from the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics within the National Science Foundation. In FY 2016, universities reported $72.0 billion in total R&D expenditures, a 4.8 percent increase from FY 2015. Of this amount, more than half (54 percent) came from the federal government.

Last week, The Digest covered newly released data from the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Science Education Statistics, which found that for the first time in five years, federal funding for higher education research and development increased in both current and constant dollars.

Estimates indicate that R&D expenditures in the United States reached $510 billion in 2016, marking the first time this total has eclipsed the half-trillion mark, according to recently released National Science Foundation data. The majority of R&D expenditures and performance comes from the private sector.

Expenditures for R&D from state government agencies increased by 17.3 percent from FY 2011 to FY 2016, reaching $2.3 billion, according to data from the Survey of State Government Research and Development, a survey sponsored by the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES). Nearly two-thirds of this total – 64 percent – came from just five state governments (California, New York, Texas, Florida, and Ohio).

The growth and intensity of higher education R&D (HERD) expenditures varies considerably across metropolitan areas, a recent SSTI analysis of National Science Foundation data finds. New York ($4.3 billion), Boston ($3.2 billion), and Baltimore ($2.9 billion) had the highest overall levels of HERD expenditures in 2016. In that same year, Ithaca, New York (19.1 percent), State College, Pennsylvania (9.5 percent), and College Station, Texas (9.4 percent) had the highest levels of HERD intensity – measured as the share of HERD expenditures to gross metropolitan product.