DC Dispatch

White House Holds Water Innovation Summit The White House recently held a water innovation summit: as a response to water challenges “facing communities and regions across the United States, impacting millions of lives and costing billions of dollars in damages.” From the press release...

Defend Trade Secrets Act Passes Senate The Senate has now passed: a bill that “amends the federal criminal code to create a private civil cause of action for trade secret misappropriation.” The Defend Trade Secrets Act (S. 1890) “authorizes a trade secret owner to file a civil...

Tech Transfer Society Call for Papers The Technology Transfer Society (T2S) will hold : its next annual conference in Washington, DC, November 2-4, 2017. There is no link yet on their website for the event, but below is a selected list of topics and relevant dates from their initial “Call for...

Status of R&D Budget (As of the summer recess) Congress went on their annual summer recess in late July: still having “a long way to go to wrap up FY 2017 appropriations.” As summarized by AAAS , “[N]one of the twelve annual spending bills have yet been signed into law, and...

FY 2018 S&T Budget Status With Congress on summer recess, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has provided a status of where we are on the current (FY 2018) science and technology (S&T) budget process. From its August 1 post , “[W]ith the House heading into the...

(Another) House Science Committee Hearing on R&D (on Energy Innovation and Tech Commercialization) The House Science, Space and Technology (SST) Committee recently held a hearing on Energy Innovation – Letting Technology Lead (see link for video, charter and witness list) in its ongoing...

More Presidential Advice (Here – innovation, productivity, competitiveness) ITIF has re-released : a revised list of recommendations it describes as “a set of actionable proposals to spur innovation, productivity, and competitiveness that the Trump administration can accomplish in its...

American Innovation and Competitiveness Act Passed (Sent to the President – Some language on tech commercialization) The Senate and House have now passed : the American Innovation and Competitiveness Act (S. 3084) and it should be on its way to the President’s desk for signature (...

FY 2016 Spending Bill Now Law (Initial reports are generally positive for S&T) The Congress passed and the President signed into law : H.R. 2029, the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2016 late last week. AAAS has an agency-by-agency ‘initial’ perspective on what the related budget...

NIST Releases 2013 Federal Tech Transfer Report (Includes new metrics) NIST has recently released : the 2013 edition of the Federal Lab Tech Transfer Summary Report to Congress . From the press release , “[T]he government-wide results include both quantitative measures (e.g., number of...