Kentucky EPSCoR

The Kentucky EPSCoR Program continues to strengthen its role as a leader, helping to improve a statewide infrastructure that leads to national research competitiveness. Kentucky’s scientists and engineers have received awards from all federal EPSCoR programs for which the state is eligible - DOE, DoD, EPA, NASA, NIH and NSF. The Statewide Program’s impact is far reaching. Faculty and students at 18 colleges and universities participate in EPSCoR projects. The pipeline of K-12 and science students is enhanced. Total Federal EPSCoR awards exceed $53 million through 1999.

The Statewide EPSCoR Committee, composed of leading scientists, university administrators, and representatives from the private and public sectors, manages the Kentucky statewide program. It operates as a quasi-independent committee of the Kentucky Science and Technology Corporation (KSTC) which houses the Statewide EPSCoR Committee.

The Committee spearheads new policies and resources, promotes rigorous merit review processes, keeps EPSCoR responsive to state and regional needs, and cultivates broad-based support for science, technology and innovation. The Committee works with and through a network of dedicated partners - federal, academic, public and private sectors - and coordinates the activities of its subcommittees which are responsible for individual agency programs. It also ensures that research support by EPSCoR has the potential to meet national research and development standards of excellence and is consistent with Kentucky’s economic and human resource development goals.

EPSCoR – National

The Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), originally established by the National Science Foundation (NSF), is a vibrant research and education infrastructure-building program in Kentucky. Its mission is to initiate and to maintain excellence in research, education and human resource development.

Eighteen states and Puerto Rico are identified as EPSCoR states because of the low federal R&D dollars-per-capita they receive. Through federal-state partnerships, EPSCoR focuses on science, engineering and technology capabilities that promote and achieve a national competitiveness status. These partnerships help to balance the distribution of federal research dollars and use state or local control in the delivery of program goals.

The success of NSF EPSCoR led other federal agencies to adopt EPSCoR partnership concepts in the 1990’s. The Department of Energy (DOE), Department of Defense (DoD), Department of Agriculture (USDA), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) now also administer EPSCoR or EPSCoR-like programs. All have research competitiveness as a cornerstone upon which the states are to create a road map leading to future national prominence.

EPSCoR supports talented, motivated individuals and groups in a competitive environment. Each EPSCoR state designs and executes its own road map for the future by melding exemplary research, education and economic development ideas into a statewide approach.


EPSCoR's Impact

The Kentucky EPSCoR Program cultivates talent in mathematics, science and engineering research and education, contributing significantly to Kentucky’s reform of postsecondary education. It further advances the development of the two major institutions as preeminent research universities and enhances the research at the regional universities, a major plank in the reform platform.

EPSCoR impacts include:

Initiating the discussions and, through the KSTC, producing the first-ever Kentucky Science &

Technology Strategy for the Commonwealth.

Cultivating the basis on which a prestigious, five-year, $11 million NSF Materials Research Science and Engineering Center program was awarded to the University of Kentucky.

Establishing the infrastructure for nationally recognized microfabrication and microsensor research at the University of Louisville and the University of Kentucky.

Promoting the establishment of new doctoral research opportunities at Murray State University through cooperation with the University of Louisville.

Advocating and training university and industrial researchers statewide in entrepreneurship and enterprise development.

Sponsoring ‘‘Phase 0’’ support to help academic researchers team with industry to obtain SBIR and STTR grants.

Supporting basic research at Western Kentucky University that has led to nationally competitive SBIR awards for technology commercialization.

Forming a statewide college student-business network to encourage and facilitate entrepreneurship and to foster commercialization of intellectual properties.

Funding multi-investigator and multi-university research centers and institutes that either are or have the potential to be nationally competitive.

Enhancing the pipeline of qualified students in math and science.

Enhancing Industry/University Partnerships

Kentucky EPSCoR endorses the creation and expansion of industry-university partnerships. Industries re-quire new approaches, the technical know-how, and advanced, economical technologies. Universities require guidance in student training and education that are directed at the markets and technologies of the future. Through cooperative funding, in which industrial sponsors share the costs of goal-oriented research at universities with the federal and state governments, EPSCoR impacts the business and entrepreneurial backbone of Kentucky. As in all of its other initiatives, EPSCoR focuses on building the technological infrastructure that is essential to ensuring a competitive Kentucky economy.

EPSCoR-supported activities, such as in microdevices, carbon nanotubes, machine perception and object recognition, physiological changes associated with micro-gravity, molecular structural diagnostics and dynamics, computerized imaging, energy processing and aquatic biochemistry, are at the cutting edge of research. Each of these research topics could develop into a thriving industry in Kentucky, conceived and implemented by new, entrepreneurial firms. Small-to-medium sized companies led economic activity in the US during the 1980’s and 1990’s. EPSCoR realizes a cornerstone of Kentucky’s science and technology capacity beyond 2000 is university-industry partnerships.


State Support & Collaborations

State government is an important partner in the Kentucky EPSCoR Program. Through 1999, the Administration and General Assembly have provided over $16 million to meet the federal matching requirements for EPSCoR funding. This support has been leveraged by over three times through competitive grants from the federal EPSCoR agencies in science and engineering infrastructure development.

Kentucky’s colleges and universities foster collaboration between institutions, establish focused dynamic research clusters, and generously co-fund the EPSCoR initiatives. Complementing these efforts are human resource and economic development programs of importance to the Commonwealth.

Growing Leaders of Tomorrow

Kentucky EPSCoR understands that the pipeline of students in science and technology has to be improved and that job opportunities for these students have to be available. Therefore, it works with local, state and national resource teams such as the Kentucky Academy and Junior Academy of Sciences, Kentucky Science Teachers Association, Kentucky Science & Technology Corporation, Kentucky Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Kentucky Department of Education, Council on Postsecondary Education, Appalachian Rural Systemic Initiative and the Math & Science Matrix Team. A cooperative, inquiry- and standards-based approach is endemic to Kentucky EPSCoR. Educating and training the minds of Kentucky undergraduate and graduate students creates new opportunities for them and produces the needed leaders of tomorrow.