DVIRC Awarded $300,000 National Science Foundation Grant to Connect Regional Assets and Spur Innovation

Project will explore how visual analytics software can help to organize and connect STEM assets in the tri-state area

PHILADELPHIA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Delaware Valley Industrial Resource Center (DVIRC) has been awarded a $300,000 research grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to examine how an advanced data visualization tool can organize and depict information in a dynamic visual environment that maps connectivity between STEM assets.

“This research has the potential to accelerate innovation by giving regional actors a tool by which to develop a clearer understanding of their current STEM landscape, including key nodes, weak and strong links, concentrations, gaps and opportunities”

“We are honored to have secured this important grant from the NSF,” says Tony Girifalco, executive vice president of DVIRC and Principal Investigator for the research. “The project is funded through NSF’s Early Stage Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER), which is designed to support exploratory work in its early stages on untested, but potentially transformative, research ideas or approaches. This work represents the next step in organizing and connecting the many STEM assets in our region, and will start by analyzing a database of power and energy assets.”

The grant was made possible through a collaboration of STEM leaders who have experience in developing innovative STEM programming, and who will be jointly conducting the research. “We are fortunate to have assembled a first-rate team of Co-Principal Investigators that include nationally respected talent such as Kathy Sullivan from the Battelle Center for Mathematics & Sciences Education Policy at Ohio State and Joe Merlino from the 21^st Century Partnership for STEM education. David Cohen from the Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern PA brings a wealth of expertise to the project and rounds out the team.”

This EAGER project will explore how to operationally and intellectually link tri-state regional assets into a dynamic network that supports a robust STEM innovation ecosystem. Specifically, it will explore how an advanced data visualization tool—Starlight—can help to organize and critically examine large collections of disparate information types, presenting the results in a variety of rich graphical formats. A tool such as Starlight enables a team of users to collaborate through the power of visual analytics and to share views across the team. The EAGER funding mechanism supports work that may be considered especially "high risk-high payoff" in the sense that it involves radically different approaches, applies new expertise, or engages novel disciplinary or interdisciplinary perspectives.

The NSF’s Strategic Plan for 2006-11 points to the need to establish systems that link independent actors into a centralized network in order to address the complexity of today’s science and engineering challenges. According to the report, in large metropolitan regions the number of actors engaged in STEM economic, research and education activities is so large and complex, executing productive programs can be daunting. The Greater Philadelphia region for instance, has nearly 500 active NSF awards in basic research and STEM Education totaling over $200 million. At the national level, the picture is even more complex, with 105 federal STEM programs distributed across 13 federal agencies comprising $3.16 billion in annual expenditure.

“This is an important award for our STEM community,” says Joseph Bordogna, former Chief Operating Officer of the NSF and the Alfred Fitler Moore Professor of Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. “This work builds upon our Regional Compact for STEM Education and will set the stage for a more robust series of partnerships and relationships to support a full range of STEM-related activities. Visual interfaces allow people to explore and make sense of growing amounts of data digitally. By linking sets of data visually, stakeholders will able to more intuitively understand, see, and cultivate key linkages and relationships.”

The project builds on earlier work conducted by Kathryn Sullivan, Director of the Battelle Center at Ohio State University which developed test data sets and visual representations of statewide STEM innovations in Ohio as well as years of STEM program development from partners in southeastern Pennsylvania. According to Courtney Heppner, Senior Associate at the Battelle Center, “Our research suggests that a robust regional innovation ecosystem must have dynamic connections between and among interdependent, but fragmented ideas, institutions and individuals within the ecosystem. Frontier research in this field continues to tackle critical challenges, such as how to determine more rigorously the link between visualizations and the underlying dynamics of the phenomena of interest, how to develop useful tests of validity and how visualization tools should respond to the different needs of various user segments. This project will advance this research and we are proud to support it.”

Joe Merlino, who helped to shape the project, has a track record of successful projects with the NSP. “This research has the potential to accelerate innovation by giving regional actors a tool by which to develop a clearer understanding of their current STEM landscape, including key nodes, weak and strong links, concentrations, gaps and opportunities,” he said. “It could also provide a conceptual taxonomy and lexicon that state- and regional-scale STEM initiatives can use to foster stronger internal alignment and cross-program comparability. Additionally, it could help policymakers better understand which mixtures and attributes of STEM assets matter most for spurring innovation.”

The initial phase of the project will begin in September 2010 and last approximately one year. An analysis and evaluation period will be conducted from January through June 2011 to quantify the findings. Results of the research will then be shared with the engineering, education and scientific community shortly thereafter, followed by public distribution.

If you’re interested in interviewing partners in the project, please contact Tony DeFazio at DeFazio Communications, LLC via phone: [phone] or by email at: [e-mail].

About DVIRC – DVIRC is a leading private, non-profit economic development organization established in 1988 to serve the needs of nearly 5,000 Small to Midsized advanced manufacturing Enterprises (SME) in five counties throughout the Philadelphia region. The organization’s primary focus is to grow business value for clients through consulting services, talent development and regional, state and federal resource assistance, helping to establish the region as an internationally recognized leader in manufacturing competitiveness. We believe growing business value improves the standard of living and quality of life for those that live and/or work in the region. A diverse board of directors comprised of executives from the manufacturing, banking, legal and economic development communities govern the DVIRC.