NSF Regional Innovation Engines
This funding opportunity supports regional partnerships to foster technology-driven innovation, economic growth, and community development, particularly in areas that have not fully benefited from recent technological advancements.
Description
The NSF Regional Innovation Engines (NSF Engines) program creates regional-scale, technology-driven innovation ecosystems throughout the United States by accelerating key technologies, addressing regional, national, societal, and/or geostrategic challenges, driving economic growth, creating and retaining quality jobs, expanding pathways into careers, and strengthening national competitiveness and security. Each NSF Engine represents a formal coalition of regional partners, led by a full-time Chief Executive Officer (CEO), tasked to carry out an integrated and comprehensive set of activities spanning use-inspired research, translation of innovation to practice, entrepreneurship, workforce development, community engagement, and ecosystem building, to nurture and accelerate the growth of regional innovation ecosystems grounded in technological innovation and regional, national, societal, and/or geostrategic challenges. The mission of an NSF Engine must be clearly rooted in regional interests and reflect the aspiration that a regional innovation ecosystem can help build strong communities where all residents can thrive. This includes the development of regional talent and intentional community engagements. The NSF Engines program is a placed-based innovation funding initiative, where the emphasis on regions expresses NSFs aim to stimulate innovation-driven economic growth within a particular place or region of service. The emphasis of the NSF Engines program further includes creating new business and economic growth in sectors that are critical to American competitiveness and in those regions of America that have not fully participated in the technology boom of the past several decades.