Quotes About the Advanced Technology Program

EIA Urges Full Funding for Advanced Technology Program

May 10, 2004

Arlington, Va. – Electronic Industries Alliance (EIA) President Dave McCurdy today sent a letter to Congressional appropriators supporting full funding in the 2005 budget for the Advanced Technology Program (ATP). The ATP has been targeted for elimination in the budget proposal, but EIA is concerned that the loss of this valuable program will weaken the U.S. innovation structure. The ATP, which is administered by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), is a public-private partnership that accelerates the commercialization of new technologies and encourages industry investment in long-term, high-risk research and development.

"The bottom-line value of investing in R&D for next-generation innovations has never been more apparent," said McCurdy in the letter. "A Harvard Business Review study of high-tech firms shows that next-generation innovations – which represent only 14% of product launches and 38% of revenue – generate 61% of profits. The research that the ATP encourages is the foundation for future jobs and growth in this country."

Full funding for the ATP is one of several proposals related to R&D policy in the recently released EIA policy playbook, "The Technology Industry at an Innovation Crossroads." The entire playbook can be accessed here. 1

Software and Information Industry Association

“We think eliminating the ATP Program is a mistake, said Ken Wash, president of the Software and Information Industry Association. “It’s a relatively modest cost program that we believe has paid for itself many times over.”2

Not corporate welfare

• 3rd Millennium -- a company that won an ATP grant in October 2000 -- is using the $1.8-million to develop software that would help biotech and pharmaceutical companies integrate, analyze and organize gene-based information to work on drugs. In order to qualify for the grant, companies must go through a rigorous evaluation by a panel of about 20 scientists, information technology specialists and economists. Eric Meyers, a 3rd Millenium VP said their researchers defended their technology in front of the panel for three hours. "The term corporate welfare smacks of pork barrel spending," he said. "In our case, nothing could be further from the truth. The evaluation was quite thorough."3
• X-ray Optical CEO David Gibson said, “ There are many dimensions to our technology. When talking with people in the private sector and the public sector, I usually faced one expert. At NIST, however, the agency brought a panel of experts to review the technical aspects of his company’s proposals.”4,
• Dr. Mark Pittenger of Osiris Therapeutics said,” An attraction of the ATP grant is that it is a competitive process that allows the quality of the technology to drive the decision-making.”

Nanotechnology

• Alan Marty, executive-in-residence at investment house JP Morgan Partners estimates that, although $500m was invested in nanotechnology start-ups in the US in 2002, a large gap exists between the laboratory and the marketplace. “Federal funding in this area has typically been lacking,” he recently told the US Congress. “Except for the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Advanced Technology Program (ATP), no government programmes properly address this vital timeframe in the cycle of research and business. This period is one that competing nations in Asia and the EU are particularly attuned to addressing and are providing a life line to many US start-ups, which sends growth and profits abroad.” Dr. Stephen Empedocles director of business development at Nanosys, a nanotech company in Palo Alto, California says he has received at least 10 times more calls per week from Asian investors and potential corporate partners than from US investors and businesses. – Financial Times, August 5, 2003
• Joe Treadway, principal scientist for Quantum Dot, which makes nanoscale crystals that can be used to understand cellular functions and potential use in diagnostic applications, said, “The program provides more than just money.” NIST requires participants to put together a project plan with a timeline, and a strategy for commercialization. “It’s structured in the language of business. We’re constantly updating our plans for the commercialization as well as the technology.” If the commercial environment changes, the program requires them to adjust their plans accordingly. “Their goal is to try to make a commercial success.”5

ATP quotes from NIST website6

“ATP’s role has been essential in recruiting and enabling small business firms to conduct scientific research that strengthens our economy, creates jobs, and promotes our national security. ATP encourages firms to develop high-risk, emerging technologies through cost-shared scientific research. This catalytic role for government is more important today given the extraordinary pace of technological change and the eroding U.S. share in most global high technology markets.”

— Alliance for Science & Technology Research in America (letter signed by representatives of more than 100 universities, companies, and other organizations)

“[T]he Advanced Technology Program ... brings together teams of researchers from different organizations to reduce leading edge, but high risk, science to products and services. This program has repeatedly yielded high returns on the federal investment entrusted to its stewardship .”

— F.M. Ross Armbrecht, Jr., President, Industrial Research Institute

“The ATP is an extremely important program for the biotechnology industry in the United States.”

— Carl B. Feldbaum, President, Biotechnology Industry Organization

“NIST’s Advanced Technology Program ... strengthens the ability of small and large companies across industrial sectors to pursue and accelerate high-risk research and technologies that would not likely be funded absent government support. Small start-up firms, for example, have relied on ATP funding to achieve technological advances that would not otherwise be possible given scarce venture capital funding in many long-term research areas.”

— American Chemical Society

“ [T]he ATP program probably has been the most assiduously studied and carefully assessed Federal technology program in the modern era. And the overwhelming bulk of those conclusions—a diversity, a spectrum of opinion, for sure—but the overwhelming preponderance of the evidence suggests the program works and that it works well.”

— Michael Borrus, Managing Director, The Petkevich Group, LLC

“[W]ithout ATP, I don’t know that we could have proceeded. We would be at least five years or more behind where we are .”

— George L. Brode, Principal Investigator, Integra Life Sciences Corp.

“Without ATP funding, we could not have developed the process for creating high-performance composite shapes.”

— Glen Barefoot, marketing director, Strongwell Corp.

“Without the ATP project, XOS (X-Ray Optical Systems, Inc.) would be at least a decade behind where it is today. And any commercial success from these new technologies most likely would not have originated in the U.S .”

— David Gibson, CEO, X-Ray Optical Systems, Inc.

“Early support from ATP was critical in enabling SAGE to develop the electrochromic (EC) materials systems and device structure for scaling the technology from a laboratory curiosity to switchable prototype windows nearly one square foot in size. Without ATP, our progress would have been delayed by more than two years .”

— Neil Sbar, Project Manager, SAGE Electrochromics, Inc.

For information on what our companies are saying, visit our web site.

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1. http://www.eia.org/news/pressreleases/2004-05-10.154.phtml

2. The Washington Post Business Section, Thursday, March 1, 2001

3. Wired Magazine, March 29, 2001

4. ATP: Challenges and Opportunities, National Academy Press (1999)

5. Small Times, April 2005

6. NIST Factsheet, NIST Public and Business Affairs Office.