Highlights

The overall theme of this year’s ERC Program annual meeting is “Structuring ERCs and the ERC Program for Maximum Innovation.”  In addition to the customary ERC Program update by Lynn Preston, highlights in plenary sessions include a panel on “Students with Startups,” a look at the highly innovative CASA low-altitude radar system and its development, a presentation on the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition organized in part by SynBERC, and looking-back reports by two outgoing ERCs. Breakout sessions—many of them focused around innovation in research and education—will address a variety of issues that impact all current centers, both individually and collectively. We will also have the traditional cross-center discussion sections organized by technology cluster.  How to achieve successful self-sustaining status while achieving high impact during and after life as an NSF-funded ERC will be another focus of the meeting.

We will have an excellent luncheon speaker on the second day:  Nicholas Donofrio, longtime Executive Vice President for Innovation & Technology at IBM Corporation, will talk about the state of innovation in high-tech industries in the U.S. and abroad.

The anticipated benefits of this meeting to the ERCs and to the NSF ERC Program are:

• for ERCs—
• An opportunity to discuss and elucidate, across the centers, issues that may in many cases pertain to the individual ERCs
• Hearing from colleagues in other ERCs how they have addressed fulfilling various ERC key features and functions, what works and what doesn’t, and how these functions and features of ERCs have evolved over time, thus gaining a better sense of how to position the center for continued future success as an ERC and beyond
• Learning about how some graduated ERCs have transformed their fields and how they did it
• Learning about new opportunities for collaboration with other ERCs and about new NSF programs that might benefit ERCs
• Exposure to new ways of thinking about engineering research and education and its connection to innovation, from speakers with diverse perspectives
• The chance for staff to network with their counterparts at other ERCs

• for the ERC Program—
• Input from ERCs regarding important issues in the funding and oversight of ERCs
• Improved program efficiencies and impacts
• Greater efficiency and effectiveness in management of current and future centers.