IDEA Engine a Finalist for NSF Engines Award!
One Step Closer!
Aerospace Center Named Finalist for $160 million/10-year NSF grant
On August 2, 2023, the National Science Foundation (NSF) selected the IDEA Engine—a proposal by the Aerospace Center and the W.M. Keck Center for 3D Innovation and community partners—as a finalist for its Regional Innovation Engines (RIE) project. NSF announced 16 finalists for the RIE grant, which it had winnowed down from the nearly 200 proposals that it received in January 2023. NSF will ultimately select five coalitions this winter to receive the transformative $160 million/10-year grant.
The goal of the IDEA Engine is to democratize innovation in the Paso del Norte region so that start-ups and small- and medium-sized manufacturers can compete in research and development with the huge companies that dominate aerospace. The IDEA Engine will create a series of tools (both physical and digital) that companies can hire on an as-needed basis, significantly reducing their costs. Manufacturers can only be as good as their employees, so the IDEA Engine also has a workforce development component designed to skill people into higher-paying STEM-related jobs.
The IDEA Engine is the latest bid by a coalition of regional partners who share a goal of transforming the Paso del Norte’s regional economy into one driven by aerospace and defense manufacturing and STEM-related jobs. The coalition’s vision is that this economy will create widespread shared economic opportunity by creating higher-paying jobs in the region. This coalition is led by the Aerospace Center and the W.M. Keck Center for 3D Innovation and include the City of El Paso, the County of El Paso, the Rio Grande Council of Governments, the National Center for Defense Machining and Manufacturing, Workforce Solutions Borderplex, El Paso Community College and Spaceport America. The coalition will continue to add partners as the project develops.
The IDEA Engine encompasses six counties in West Texas— El Paso, Hudspeth, Brewster, Culberson, Jeff Davis and Presidio—and two counties in Southern New Mexico—Doña Ana and Sierra. The region has tremendous assets for aerospace research, including White Sands Missile Range, Spaceport America, and Blue Origin’s launch site outside of Van Horn.
Dr. Ahsan Choudhuri—associate vice-president for the Aerospace Center—sees the IDEA Engine as a complimentary component to the region’s recently awarded $40 million Build Back Better Regional Challenge grant from the Economic Development Administration (EDA). “Our goal is to bring $1.2 billion in investments to the Paso del Norte region to spark the rebirth of American manufacturing here in our community. These investments will create long-term infrastructure that aerospace businesses can build on top of and create pathways into middle class jobs in STEM-related fields through education. We are not asking for a handout, but for our share of America’s prosperity.”
The goal of the NSF’s Regional Innovation Engine project is to spark the development of sustainable, geographically disperse innovation economies around the U.S. America is a global leader in technological innovation, but the industries that grow out of this innovation tend are regionally concentrated. This limits the ability of most Americans to access the economic opportunity these industries create. Congress appropriated funding for the RIE project in the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022.