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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 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 impacts include:
Enhancing
Industry/University Partnerships 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.
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
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