R&D Management

International Freezer Challenge honors Univ. of Illinois with 2021 “Winning Streak Award.” By Becky Chambers Hennessy, contributing writer (This is part two of a two-part series. Read part one, Facing sustainability in the lab, here.) The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is continuing a hot streak in arguably the coolest competition around. The university was recognized…

By Becky Chambers Hennessy, contributing writer Scientific research leaders are taking a long look in the mirror. They see their laboratories as home to beneficial scientific breakthroughs, in areas from epidemiology and the coronavirus to climate change and greenhouse gases. They’re also recognizing them as resource-intensive spaces with enormous carbon footprints. It’s an irony that’s…

Sandy Robert, CAE will join ASM International as executive director, effective January 1, 2022. Robert will be completing this year as CEO of the Association for Women in Science (AWIS), where she was hired in 2019 to turn around the association’s business model. During her three-year tenure, she spearheaded membership growth and engagement, significantly increased…

By Gordon Feller, Contributing Writer Increasingly, trilateral R&D partnerships — linking government with academia and industry — are considered critical to the success of Silicon Valley. Such mixed partnerships succeed when they link industrial firms with governments with universities, especially as real-world variations of the “triple helix” model of innovation, which is a more common…

MIT Professional Education is announcing a new professional certificate program in Strategic Technology Roadmapping and Innovation. With an emphasis on strategic technological leadership, the unique learning experience will provide professionals with the key tools and expertise necessary to successfully implement and manage emerging technologies within their 21st-century organizations. “Effective technology implementation requires careful planning, evaluation…

The transition from R&D to pharma manufacturing can be a pretty high hurdle to clear for many companies in the life sciences industry. Scaling up to a manufacturing process requires a considerable investment in time and money – and a thorough knowledge of current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP). Larger companies typically have in-house experts or…

The R&D Tax Credit offers a significant tax incentive for companies in a broad spectrum of technology-based industries. The credit has been part of the Internal Revenue Service tax code since 1981 and is responsible for billions of dollars in tax savings each year. It has gained even more popularity as a result of modifications…

SPT Labtech, a laboratory automation solutions company for the life sciences industry, announces changes in its leadership team to further capitalize on its organic and acquisition-led growth. David Newble has been appointed CEO, SPT Labtech, stepping up from his previous position as managing director. In his new capacity he takes responsibility for all SPT Labtech…

mHUB, an independent hardtech innovation and manufacturing center, will welcome nine high-growth startups to Chicago to participate in the premiere cohort of its Accelerated Incubation, a six-month, hands-on accelerator focused on hardtech product development and commercialization. The nine selected teams were chosen from a pool of nearly 500 applicants, 27% of whom were international teams.…

Brett Wood, the President & CEO of Toyota Material Handling North America (TMHNA), was recently appointed to Senior Executive Officer of TMHNA’s parent company, Toyota Industries Corporation (TICO). Wood becomes the only non-Japanese TICO executive. Wood, a 32-year veteran of Toyota, will maintain his current responsibilities as TMHNA President & CEO in addition to his…

Recently, I interviewed master inventor Dean Kamen, well known as the inventor of the stair climbing wheelchair and the Segway, as well as the creator of the FIRST Robotics competitions for school children. I explained to Dean how R&D World’s Global Funding Forecast was reporting that China will outspend the U.S. for the very first…

The COVID-19 pandemic created numerous issues in early 2020 relating to academic R&D. When the pandemic first spread throughout the U.S. in March, schools were among the first establishments to close their facilities to prevent the spread of the virus. This remained the standard operating mode through the end of the year.  With no students,…

On December 27, 2020, President Trump signed the U.S. Consolidated Appropriations Act for 2021. This $2.3 trillion spending bill combines $900 billion in stimulus relief for the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. with a $1.4-trillion omnibus spending bill for the FY2021 budget. The omnibus bill also prevents a government shutdown. An omnibus spending bill again…

As we end an economically disastrous 2020, the outlook for 2021 appears to be that of a “rousing recovery,” according to U.S. investment strategists. Economists anticipate that continued accommodative monetary and fiscal policies will support markets and that market-destabilizing political developments will not come to pass. A small economic recovery began in the summer of…

By Tim Studt, Contributing Editor For 62 years, R&D World and its predecessors have published an annual R&D funding forecast. These reports predict the combined dollar amount of R&D investments expected by industry, government and academia for the upcoming calendar year. Over those years, the publications these reports have appeared in have changed their ownership…

Cypris, an NYC-based startup, recently released a dashboard that provides direct access to the USPTO patent dataset, in an easy to navigate format for non-patent search professionals. Cypris’s clean user interface makes it seamless for users to identify active technologies within their field, as well as see visualizations around the data points. Using the dataset,…

By Mark Butler, IPS The race for a COVID-19 vaccine has highlighted the importance of accelerating the design and construction process, in order to bring manufacturing facilities online to produce the vaccine as quickly as possible. The silver lining of the COVID pandemic is that it has fostered innovation and collaboration. While companies are racing…

The National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) will be hosting a virtual ALL IN Summit to help businesses learn how they can deliver on their commitment to drive real change for the Black community. The summit will take place from 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm (EST), on Wednesday, November 18, 2020. It is designed to…

Late last year, I attended an excellent CDX conference at Georgia Tech that was focused on digital transformation. There were speakers from all sorts of well-known organizations, from Accenture to Verizon. But all of these months later, I’m still struck by the intriguing talk from Rajesh Anandan of Ultranauts, an organization I’d never heard of.…

About half of the respondents to the 2020 Global R&D Funding Forecast survey expect their 2020 R&D budgets to rise. More than a third also expect to see their capital budgets increase and their organization’s participation in alliances grow as well. Only 16% of the respondents expect to see their acquisition of outside intellectual property…

One can almost see the future of R&D in current biopharmaceutical research labs: There are often no researchers in attendance. Yet the instrumentation is humming away, and automated loading and unloading systems are quietly and smoothly shuffling sample trays. Data is detected, collected and automatically loaded into digital files which are available immediately in real-time…

By Brett Malone, Ph.D., President & CEO Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center Not every research project succeeds. And not every company survives. However, the ones that align with the culture of winning and sign up and adopt the community charter are opting in for a much higher chance of disrupting their industry and changing the…

by DePaul University Racial and ethnic diversity in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) remains low, continuing to raise concerns for equity and inclusion of scholars from minoritized communities. But there are steps that can be taken now to help make research groups more equitable and inclusive, stressed the authors of a new paper published…

mHUB, an independent hardtech innovation and manufacturing center, today announced the launch of mHUB Accelerated Incubation, a six-month, hands-on startup accelerator focused on the product development and commercialization of early-stage, high-potential physical product startups. mHUB Accelerated Incubation will focus on startups building and growing demand-driven technologies in industries such as Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT),…

China and Asian R&D During the 2008-2009 financial crisis, China’s massive demand for goods and materials supported global economic growth, especially in areas like Brazil, Germany and Australia, which avoided recessions because of Chinese trade. That type of response for the COVID-19 pandemic is not likely this year. China’s economy was affected more in 2020…