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…

European Union/U.K. R&D Like most other regions of the world, the European Union (EU) and the U.K. have been caught in the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown and economic consequences. In April, the U.K., the world’s sixth largest economy, saw its output drop 20% from March and 25% from April 2019. The U.K.’s Office for National Statistics…

Energy R&D With the COVID-19 recession, restricted travel and dramatically reduced aerospace demand, demand and production of oil and gas declined more than 20% in the spring. Global oil prices crashed in April. The West Texas and Eastern New Mexico Permian Basin, with its fracking technologies, helped lead the U.S. into global oil leadership just…

Aerospace and defense R&D The commercial airline industry — both suppliers and operators — has been one of the hardest hit industries by the COVID-19 pandemic and is likely to be one of the longest affected industries as well. Boeing, Airbus and General Electric have seen their business models go from years-long production backlogs to…

Global pharmaceutical R&D The global biopharmaceutical R&D community has been tasked with finding a cure for the COVID-19 virus. The global health-care industry, up until this pandemic, had been one of the best performing sectors for the investment community. But since the rapid global expansion of the COVID-19 virus in April 2020, it has been…

Putting COVID-19 in perspective The COVID-19 pandemic is not unique. There have been similar events throughout history, including the H1N1-based influenza pandemic (Spanish Flu), which started in 1918 and was estimated to result in 50 million deaths worldwide (and 675,000 in the U.S.). The H3N2-based Hong Kong flu pandemic in 1968 was estimated to be…

By Tim Studt This special editorial section is an update to R&D World’s 2020 Global R&D Funding Forecast (GFF), which has been published annually since January 1959 (the first issue of R&D World’s predecessor, Industrial Research). The original 2020 GFF was created and published in the February 2020 issue of R&D World (and online at www.rdworldonline.com)…

What scientists and engineers need to know to help keep software, hardware and connected systems secure By Patricia Panchak, Contributing Writer In the cat-and-mouse struggle against bad actors in our inter-networked world, scientists and engineers are on the front lines. As developers of technology that can mean the difference between an adversarial breach and a…

By Anne Marie Knott To set the stage for a discussion of R&D metrics, let’s understand why companies do R&D in the first place. This takes us back to the beginning of the 20th Century. Companies formed labs to create new opportunities. In some cases, this was because existing business was disappearing and needed to…

Research infrastructures are increasingly important to research and development activity by providing access to the latest detection, imaging, computational and research techniques at scale. Maintaining and improving these infrastructures requires interdisciplinary skills bridging science, engineering, service provision and management, that are not usually provided by traditional training programs in academia or industry. “During the last years…

By Becky Chambers Hennessy Collaboration is among the flagship strategies of innovation for research scientists, engineers and technical professionals. Here, three R&D experts weigh in on China as it rises to become the world’s top R&D investor. They also address some of the benefits and challenges of openness in research, and the inclusion of foreign…

A look at whether “to innovate, collaborate” is always the best strategy when it comes to global R&D By Becky Chambers Hennessy If ever there were a need for innovation through intellectual exchange and collaboration it is this: the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19), reportedly first identified in China. R&D experts worldwide know this, and the U.S.…