WESTBOROUGH, MASS. – Today, the Healey-Driscoll Administration and the Innovation Institute at MassTech announced a new award totaling $5,496,701 to UMass Lowell through MassTech’s Collaborative R&D Matching Grant Program to establish the Massachusetts Alliance for Space Technology & Sciences (MASTS), a new research hub at UMass Lowell focused on space technology. The Alliance, which is a consortium of research universities, colleges, and corporations from across the globe, will be led by UMass Lowell. The funds will support a two-year project, boosted by over $10 million in match funds from outside partners, which will enable the development of a one-stop support system for innovators working on small spacecraft.
The Innovation Institute at the MassTech Collaborative has awarded grants to three organizations to boost the development of regional startup communities. The $500,000 in grants from the Strong Entrepreneur Ecosystems program will allow the Downtown Northampton Association, the North Central Massachusetts Development Corporation, and Worcester’s Venture Forum to each drive more openness and collaboration among entrepreneurs, government, academia, nonprofits, and anchor institutions in each region, uniting organizations that welcome diverse innovators and encouraging them to start and scale companies.
BOSTON – The Baker-Polito Administration yesterday announced a new $820,000 innovation grant to UMass Boston from the Seaport Economic Council (SEC), which will invest in new research and development tools on the waterfront campus and to spur engagement with innovative BlueTech startups. The SEC’s Innovation Grant program, managed by the Innovation Institute at the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative (MassTech), will also boost increased engagement between UMass Boston and the local BlueTech community through an expanded partnership with Boston-based SeaAhead, an organization launched in 2018 to support startups focused on innovation and sustainability in the world’s oceans.
WESTBOROUGH – The Innovation Institute at the MassTech Collaborative has awarded four $25,000 awards from the Strong Entrepreneur Ecosystems program, grants that will boost efforts to grow sustainable startup ecosystems across Massachusetts. The grants, awarded in August, are designed as ‘strategic planning’ awards, which have allowed the lead organizations to convene advisory groups of local entrepreneurs and key ecosystem stakeholders to understand the unique needs of entrepreneurs in their regions, map existing entrepreneurial resources, and develop a strategic plan to address ecosystem gaps and increase access to startup resources.
On Tuesday, September 13, 2022, our Innovation Institute team joined Massachusetts Lt. Governor Karyn Polito to celebrate the launch of UMass Dartmouth’s new Biodegradability Laboratory, housed at the School for Marine Science & Technology in New Bedford.
BURLINGTON, MASS. – On Wednesday, September 7th, the Baker-Polito Administration visited Northeastern University’s Innovation Campus in Burlington for the announcement of a new $3.5 million grant for the Experiential Quantum Advancement Laboratories (EQUAL), a nearly $10 million project to advance the emerging quantum sensing and related technology sectors in the state. The Northeastern-led project will establish new partnerships and leverage several ongoing ones with academic institutions and industry partners. The aim is to develop next-generation quantum technologies, boost training in quantum information science and engineering for students and workers, and establish greater partnerships among industry and government around quantum sensing and related technologies.
BOSTON – Housing and Economic Development Secretary Mike Kennealy joined leaders from the tech and innovation sector at Rapid7 in Boston today for the announcement of three new grants from the Commonwealth’s Tech Talent Diversity Initiative, an effort aimed at boosting diversity hiring and training opportunities for diverse candidates. The three grants, totaling $494,947, were awarded to Hack.Diversity in Boston, Benjamin Franklin Cummings Institute of Technology in Boston, and Tech Foundry in Springfield.
BOSTON – The echoes of the COVID-19 global health crisis were apparent in the latest edition of The Index of the Massachusetts Innovation Economy, a report that tracks the strength of the Commonwealth’s tech and innovation sectors. Even with net job losses in nine of 11 key tech sectors in 2020, the Massachusetts tech and innovation economy continued to be a top state in terms of total R&D investment ($36 billion in 2018, second only to California), record venture capital investment ($15.8 billion in 2020), and increased investment in higher education per student (up 29.4 percent since 2015).
QUINCY, MASS. – Today, the Baker-Polito Administration announced a $1,961,375 grant to Quincy’s QUBIC Labs, an incubator that will work with startups and entrepreneurs interested in building blockchain apps, technologies that hold the potential to transform innovation-focused sectors including finance, healthcare, insurance, supply chain, and government. The grant is the first award made under the Commonwealth’s Technology & Innovation Ecosystem Awards program, a funding initiative launched earlier this year to provide capital support to innovative projects statewide.
BOSTON – On Wednesday, the Baker-Polito Administration announced a $4,394,848 grant to Boston University for a new research and development center called the Robotics and Autonomous Systems Teaching and Innovation Center (RASTIC). The project will drive the development of new innovations with private sector partners in Massachusetts and increase student research opportunities in the robotics space. RASTIC will emphasize real-world prototyping projects to integrate new materials, functionality, and artificial intelligence into robotic devices, delivering tools that will allow students to design and launch their own R&D projects.
