Washington D.C. - According to STEM Ecosystems, fostering collaboration is the top recommendation offered by the STEM Learning Ecosystems Community of Practice for how the Biden-Harris administration can improve STEM learning and connections to careers in communities across the country.
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The STEM Learning Ecosystems Community of Practice developed five major recommendations for how the Biden-Harris administration, as well as individual states, can improve STEM learning for all.

Trenton, New Jersey - According to The New Jersey Commission on Science, Innovation and Technology (CSIT), it today announced that it has awarded a total of $450,000 to 16 early-stage companies through the state’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer Program (STTR) Direct Financial Assistance Program. Each of the awardees is currently engaged in the federal SBIR and/or STTR programs. The awards will enhance the state’s innovation economy by strengthening the competitiveness of Garden State businesses participating in the federal programs. To date, CSIT has awarded a total of $825,000 to 29 New Jersey companies during the program’s two funding rounds.
The federal SBIR and STTR grant programs provide more than $3 billion each year to small businesses in a variety of technology and life sciences areas that propose innovative ideas that meet specific federal research and development (R&D) needs. The SBIR program enables small businesses to explore their technological potential and provides the incentive to profit from its commercialization. The STTR program funds cooperative R&D partnerships between small businesses and research institutions such as universities, federal R&D centers, or non-profits. The programs are open to U.S.-based, for-profit small businesses with fewer than 500 employees.

Fairfield, New Jersey - According to New Jersey Business magazine, Gov. Phil Murphy signed legislation that establishes the Community College Opportunity Grant Program (CCOG), which will allow qualified students to attend any New Jersey community college without tuition or educational fees. 

Trenton, New Jersey - According to the New Jersey Commission on Science, Innovation and Technology (CSIT), it has announced that it will begin accepting applications next month for a competitive matching grant that will provide $225,000 to a New Jersey technical assistance provider vying for participation in the Federal and State Technology (FAST) Partnership Program. CSIT plans to award the grant to one organization seeking to execute state/regional programs that bolster the number of proposals submitted to the federal Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer Program (STTR) Support programs. The application for the grant opens March 22 and will be available at http://www.njeda.com/csit. 

Trenton, New Jersey - According to The New Jersey Economic Development Authority (NJEDA), it announced that it anticipates awarding $14 million in grants to 27 organizations through its Sustain & Serve NJ program. The NJEDA launched applications for Sustain & Serve NJ in late 2020 to support restaurants that have been negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The NJEDA expects that the funding announced today will result in the purchase of 1.5 million meals from at least 160 New Jersey restaurants in at least 69 cities in 12 counties. 
“New Jersey’s restaurants were hit particularly hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the outpouring of interest in Sustain & Serve NJ underscores the community’s desire to help local restaurants and the neighborhoods they serve,” Governor Phil Murphy said. “The positive economic impact of this program for the restaurant industry, combined with the good it will do in the community, makes Sustain & Serve NJ a home run.”

New Jersey - According to an op-ed by on nj.com by Judy Savage and Aaron Fichtner, jobs and businesses will be forever changed by the coronavirus pandemic, and employers will need new strategies to find and develop the talent they need for future growth.
While post-pandemic workforce needs are still evolving, New Jersey companies can begin building their pipeline of future employees right now by partnering with county vocational-technical schools and community colleges.
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Trenton, New Jersey - According to Senate Republican Leader Tom Kean, his legislation requiring new guidance in the recruitment of underrepresented students for STEM programs was approved by the New Jersey Senate.“STEM fields are some of the fastest-growing in the country and students who would like to pursue a STEM career should be able to do so regardless of their gender or ethnicity,” said Kean (R-21). “My legislation will make certain that colleges and universities focus on ways to recruit historically underrepresented students in STEM programs.”

Columbus, OH - According Colin Edwards, "Industry investment in research and development (R&D) indicates, literally, how invested each state’s businesses are in creating new products and processes. To better-understand industry’s commitment to innovation, business R&D can be viewed as a percentage of each state’s private sector gross domestic product (GDP), providing a measure of research intensity. This measure highlights substantial differences in the orientation of states’ businesses toward research, with some states seeing an investment rate of less than 1 percent while others are above 5 percent. The metric further reveals a broad trend that businesses in many states have stagnated their investments in R&D relative to the overall performance of the economy.

New Brunswick, NJ - The pioneering researcher led the development of the first approved coronavirus saliva test. Andrew Brooks, 51, a research professor who led the creation of the first coronavirus saliva-based test, which received FDA emergency approval last spring and has played a significant role in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, died unexpectedly on Saturday. More than four million rapid response tests, which were the first approved for home use, have been performed since March, earning Brooks and his lab's pioneering work recognition in The New York Times, CNN and other national media outlets.

New Brunswick, NJ - Today, Rutgers University Libraries are launching a new SOAR research repository to improve worldwide discovery and access to Rutgers scholarship. ​SOAR: Scholarly Open Access at Rutgers is our institutional repository, dedicated to collecting and providing access to Rutgers research. Developed in 2015, SOAR supports the Rutgers Open Access Policy and serves as a platform to showcase and provide public access to Rutgers scholarship. Works deposited by Rutgers scholars are made available through the SOAR website and indexed by Google Scholar and other search engines where they can be discovered and read by researchers worldwide.

Trenton, NJ - According to Christopher Emigholz, "The wide breadth and rich depth of the unprecedented, more than $14 billion multi-year “New Jersey Economic Recovery Act of 2020” (P.L.2020 c.156) makes the law a potentially transformative economic development tool. It passed the Legislature on Dec. 21, 2020 and was signed into law by Gov. Phil Murphy at a ceremony with NJBIA in attendance on Jan. 7, 2021. The statute took effect immediately, but as a practical matter only becomes active after the New Jersey Economic Development Authority promulgates the rules and regulations that will govern it."

Columbus, OH - Concluding its final phase of the Small Business Pulse Survey (SBPS), the U.S. Census Bureau released findings comparing responses from early in the pandemic to those collected the first week in January. From early responses collected in April 2020 to those collected this winter, business expectations of a return to normal level of operations have shifted so that there are many businesses with expectations at opposite extremes: businesses with expectation of a short-term return to normal and those facing long-term challenges.

Columbus, OH - According to Kevin Michel, "A recent study exploring the science underlying all 356 pharmaceutical drugs approved by the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research since 2010, found each drug is based on life science investments the public sector has made through the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In addition, $230 billion, nearly 40 percent of the $586 billion the federal government has put into NIH over the past decade, can be tied to the development and success of those pharmaceuticals, contend the authors of Government as the First Investor in Biopharmaceutical Innovation: Evidence from New Drug Approvals 2010-2019. "

Newark, NJ — Denarra Simmons knew she always wanted to live in Newark. "It's a good place," the senior scientist with Merck says of her home city, where she raises her family on the same block her mother grew up on. Education was a top priority in their household, where it was viewed as a crucial tool for "social mobility." But even in her family, there's a certain level of distrust when it comes to the coronavirus vaccine and the role of researchers such as herself – particularly in the pharmaceutical industry.