(Press-News.org) LEXINGTON, Ky. (May 11, 2023) — The University of Kentucky, as lead organization, together with partners across Kentucky and Tennessee, has been awarded $1 million from the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Regional Innovation Engines, or NSF Engines, program. This team’s proposal, “Advancing carbon centric circular economy technologies for advanced manufacturing solutions (KY, TN),” is led by a coalition named Generate Advanced Manufacturing Excellence for Change (GAME Change).
The GAME Change team is among the more than 40 unique teams to receive one of the first-ever NSF Engines Development Awards. This Type-1 award provides two years of funding for planning to help partners collaborate to create economic, societal and technological opportunities for their regions, setting them up to pursue an NSF Engine Type-2 award of up to $160 million – the largest award ever offered by the NSF.
The coalition of research, education, economic development, industrial and manufacturing leaders of the Southeastern Commerce Corridor (SCC) of Kentucky and Tennessee under GAME Change aims to create a diverse innovation and talent development hub that secures U.S. competitiveness in Next-Generation Manufacturing (NGM) and supply chain logistics, supports closed-cycle manufacturing to reduce waste and increases efficiencies across sectors including automotive, aerospace, energy, food and beverage, and materials.
GAME Change is centered in the SCC, including the I-65 and I-75 thoroughfares and the promising high-growth centers of Louisville, Lexington, Nashville, Knoxville and Chattanooga that outline an Appalachian region in need of greater connectivity and economic resiliency. GAME Change’s leadership includes four R1 universities with strong manufacturing research expertise, three doctoral institutions, an R2 HBCU, a national laboratory, more than 30 community and technical colleges, and Kentucky and Tennessee counterpart representatives of state government and tech-based economic development organizations. The leadership is supported by more than 50 other collaborating partners across Kentucky and Tennessee, including more than 20 companies representing multiple industries in the region.
“The University of Kentucky is honored to receive this support from the National Science Foundation,” said UK Vice President for Research Lisa Cassis. “The CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 marked an unprecedented push for research and development in science and technology and the workforce of the future. UK is ready to rise to that challenge with our depth and breadth of research talent and our longstanding regional partnerships. Together we can advance Kentucky and our region, train students to succeed in tomorrow’s economy and create sustainable manufacturing solutions.”
“I am incredibly proud of our institution’s leadership and support and grateful for our Mid-South coalition collaborators evidencing broad partnership between Kentucky and Tennessee to compete and win this prestigious Development Award,” said Ian McClure, principal investigator on the award, associate vice president for research, innovation and economic impact, and executive director of UK Innovate. “The Regional Innovation Engines program is a game-changer for our country, and we believe that the Southeastern Commerce Corridor of Kentucky and Tennessee is as competitive as any other region to become one of the country’s next top innovation ecosystems. By 2034, our region will be a global leader in next-generation manufacturing and supply chain innovation for the circular economy, supported by an inclusive and diverse workforce. This Development Award is a fantastic step to catalyze that vision into reality.”
The NSF Engines program is a transformational investment for the nation, ensuring the U.S. remains in the vanguard of competitiveness for decades to come.
“These NSF Engines Development Awards lay the foundation for emerging hubs of innovation and potential future NSF Engines,” said NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan. “These awardees are part of the fabric of NSF’s vision to create opportunities everywhere and enable innovation anywhere. They will build robust regional partnerships rooted in scientific and technological innovation in every part of our nation. Through these planning awards, NSF is seeding the future for in-place innovation in communities and to grow their regional economies through research and partnerships. This will unleash ideas, talent, pathways and resources to create vibrant innovation ecosystems all across our nation.”
Launched by NSF’s new Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships and authorized by the “CHIPS and Science Act of 2022,” the NSF Engines program uniquely harnesses the nation’s science and technology research and development enterprise and regional-level resources. NSF Engines aspire to catalyze robust partnerships to positively impact regional economies, accelerate technology development, address societal challenges, advance national competitiveness and create local, high-wage jobs.
Learn more:
gamechangeengine.org
NSF Engines Development Awards Map
NSF Engines program website
Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Science Foundation under Award Number 2302947. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
As the state’s flagship, land-grant institution, the University of Kentucky exists to advance the Commonwealth. We do that by preparing the next generation of leaders — placing students at the heart of everything we do — and transforming the lives of Kentuckians through education, research and creative work, service and health care. We pride ourselves on being a catalyst for breakthroughs and a force for healing, a place where ingenuity unfolds. It's all made possible by our people — visionaries, disruptors and pioneers — who make up 200 academic programs, a $501 million research and development enterprise and a world-class medical center, all on one campus.
In 2022, UK was ranked by Forbes as one of the “Best Employers for New Grads” and named a “Diversity Champion” by INSIGHT into Diversity, a testament to our commitment to advance Kentucky and create a community of belonging for everyone. While our mission looks different in many ways than it did in 1865, the vision of service to our Commonwealth and the world remains the same. We are the University for Kentucky.
END
Kentucky, Tennessee GAME Change team wins NSF Engines Development Award
2023-05-11
[Attachments] See images for this press release:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Study could help solve mystery of the disappearing twins
2023-05-11
Key takeaways
UCLA and Keck Observatory scientists analyzed over a decade’s worth of data about 16 young supermassive stars orbiting the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy.
Supermassive stars typically are formed in pairs, but the new study found that all 16 of the stars were singletons.
The findings support a scenario in which the supermassive black hole drives nearby stars to either merge or be disrupted, with one of the pair being ejected from the system.
When supermassive stars are born, they’re almost always paired ...
Expansion of cell-to-cell communication drives the early development of pancreatic cancer, new research in mice finds
2023-05-11
Discussions of cancer often stress the genetic mutations that drive disease by altering the normal function of cellular proteins. KRAS, for example, normally acts as an on/off switch for cellular proliferation, but mutations to the gene — common in lung cancer, colorectal cancer and pancreatic cancer — cause that switch to stay on.
Yet mutations are only half of the story.
Interactions between these genetic mutations and external factors, such as tissue injury that leads to inflammation, reshape both cells’ identities and their local environment in ways that foster cancer’s emergence and runaway growth.
In pancreatic cancer, these changes start ...
When stem cells can’t roll on a bumpy road, muscles break down
2023-05-11
Key takeaways
Stem cells travel along a collagen network to reach damaged muscle tissue and heal it.
In Duchenne muscular dystrophy, stiff, scarred collagen prevents stem cells from reaching their target.
A protein called sarcospan lessens this scarring and allows stem cells to do their job more successfully, pointing toward potential new treatments for the disorder.
Muscles that ache after a hard workout usually don’t hurt for long, thanks to stem cells that rush to the injured site along “collagen highways” within the muscle and repair the damaged tissue. ...
SwRI to lead NASA/SSERVI Center for Lunar Origin and Evolution
2023-05-11
SAN ANTONIO — May 11, 2023 —Southwest Research Institute has entered into a five-year, $7.5-million cooperative agreement with NASA to lead the Center for Lunar Origin and Evolution (CLOE), which will conduct basic research to support science enabled by human exploration of the Moon and the Endurance-A mission concept, a far side lunar rover mission prioritized by the 2022 Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey report, “Origins, Worlds, and Life.” CLOE will be part of NASA’s Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI).
“The Moon is unmatched in its potential to provide ...
Google Quantum AI braids non-Abelian anyons for the first time
2023-05-11
Our intuition tells us that it should be impossible to see whether two identical objects have been swapped back and forth, and for all particles observed to date, that has been the case. Until now.
Non-Abelian anyons - the only particles that have been predicted to break this rule - have been sought for their fascinating features and their potential to revolutionize quantum computing by making the operations more robust to noise. Microsoft and others have chosen this approach for their quantum computing effort. But after decades of efforts by researchers in the field, observing non-Abelian anyons and their strange behavior has proven challenging, ...
Solar-powered balloons detect mysterious sounds in the stratosphere #ASA184
2023-05-11
CHICAGO, May 11, 2023 – Imagine if sending your science experiment 70,000 ft in the air just took painter’s plastic, tape, a dash of charcoal dust, and plenty of sunlight.
Daniel Bowman of Sandia National Laboratories will present his findings using solar-powered hot air balloons to eavesdrop on stratospheric sounds at the upcoming 184th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, running May 8-12 at the Chicago Marriott Downtown Magnificent Mile Hotel. His presentation will take place Thursday, May 11, at 2:50 p.m. Eastern U.S. in the Purdue/Wisconsin ...
Earth system modeling and fossil data reveal Homo adaptation to diverse environments
2023-05-11
Homo species – particularly Homo sapiens – were uniquely equipped to adapt to highly diverse environmental conditions and landscape mosaics, according to a new study, which may have enabled our species and that of our closely related ancestors to survive and thrive in highly fluctuating Pleistocene environments. Homo sapiens are the only surviving hominin species today. However, whether this is because our species was uniquely successful at adapting to Pleistocene environments, because we outcompeted other contemporary Homo species through unique physiological or social adaptations, ...
A better route to benzocyclobutenes, sought-after buildingblocks for drugs
2023-05-11
LA JOLLA, CA— Scripps Research chemists have solved a long-standing problem in the field of pharmaceutical chemistry with a relatively simple and controllable method for making benzocyclobutenes (BCBs)—a class of reactive compounds that are highly valued as building blocks for drug molecules, but have been relatively hard to access.
The new method, described in a paper in Science on May 12, uses designer ligand molecules with palladium-atom catalysts to break pairs of adjacent methylene-type C-H bonds in relatively cheap and abundant carboxylic acids. Breaking these bonds enables the making ...
Researchers discover twisted fields around mysterious fast radio burst
2023-05-11
Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are the brightest millisecond-duration cosmic explosions in radio bands. Their unknown origin poses challenges for astronomy as well as physics.
The Commensal Radio Astronomy FAST Survey (CRAFTS), a key program of the Five-hundred-meter Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), discovered the world's first persistently active repeating FRB, known as FRB 20190520B. Now this FRB has provided clues that may help clarify the origin of FRBs.
An international team led by Dr. LI Di from the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC) carried out a monitoring campaign of FRB 20190520B, using the Parkes telescope in Australia and ...
U.S. Fishing Policy is Boosting Fish Populations, Not Constraining Most Fisheries
2023-05-11
Commercial fishing employs 1.2 million Americans and generates more than $165 billion annually. Yet warming waters are threatening fish populations and disrupting fisheries around the world—a challenge set to worsen as climate change advances. Despite the importance of sustaining fisheries, the reauthorization of the cornerstone policy protecting them in the United States—the Magnuson-Stevens Act—has been stalled in Congress for a decade. The holdup? Some blame the policy for being too stringent and leading to what they call “underfishing,” while others ...