NIST PLAYS FOR HIGH STAKES

Abstract

SMALL AND MEDIUM -sized U.S. companies, as well as universities and nonprofit organizations, pursuing high-risk research have a new path to federal funding in the Technology Innovation Program (TIP) of the National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST). The program will award financial support for up to nine projects in the fall, but funding beyond 2008 is uncertain. TIP replaces NIST’s embattled Advanced Technology Program (ATP), which the Bush Administration eliminated last year. The new program, which is similar in some ways to ATP, supports U.S. innovation by funding high-risk research, but TIP requires that projects be focused on areas of critical national need. As part of the legislation that established TIP in 2007, ongoing ATP programs can continue to receive support under TIP. “The key thing to understand is that TIP is not ATP. It is a new and different program, with different goals,” TIP Program Director Marc G. Stanley emphasizes when asked to compare ...