With recent manufacturing investments and a growing amount of venture capital, New Mexico's Economic Development Department has moved to expand its science and technology office by adding more staff and broadening its capacity to work with entrepreneurs and organizations in the state.
The expanded office under the Economic Development Department (EDD) will be called the Office of Strategy, Science and Technology (OSST). Two new staff are set to join the office, including Jeff Hall, who will serve as the OSST's program coordinator. He previously worked as the Technology Transfer Program Manager for New Mexico Manufacturing Extension Partnership, according to a Tuesday news release.
The state is looking to hire an entrepreneurship coordinator for the expanded office, as well. That job posting can be found online and closes Oct. 2.
Hall and the yet-to-be-hired entrepreneurship coordinator will join Nora Meyers Sackett, who takes over as director of the office from her previous role as EDD special projects director. Sackett worked in the Governor's Office for four years prior to joining the state's Economic Development Department.
She told Albuquerque Business First the expanded office will continue its focus on five economic sectors, those being aerospace, bioscience, cybersecurity, intelligent manufacturing and sustainable and green energy. The latter has been seeing a lot of "movement forward," she said.
Sackett said the department recently opened a pair of new funding opportunities targeted at the sector — one for science and tech innovation and commercialization in higher education, and the other for advanced energy commercialization proposals from New Mexico companies. They're intended as "pilot programs," she added, for "what we we might be able to continue to do and grow."
Aerospace and bioscience are two other sectors Sackett highlighted. Bioscience, in particular, can be a difficult sector to target with state programs, she said, because of the long "lead time" it takes bioscience companies to reach marketability.
"I want to think creatively, think outside of the box, about what other levers can we pull to support homegrown New Mexico bioscience companies to grow and be able to stay here," Sackett said.
And, in regards to intelligent manufacturing, New Mexico recently announced a couple of large manufacturing investments in the state — a $1 billion planned Albuquerque facility from Singapore-based Maxeon Solar Technologies Ltd., and a $99 million investment in Santa Teresa by Hota Industrial Manufacturing, a Taiwanese company.
There are also a lot of federal funding opportunities available for statewide agencies and organizations at the moment, and Sackett said a big part of the expanded office's work will be helping those organizations apply for and land federal dollars. That's where the "strategy" part of the expanded office's title comes in, she added.
Some examples include hydrogen hub funding through the U.S. Department of Energy, which New Mexico is a part of alongside Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, and money from the National Science Foundation through its Regional Innovation Engine program — which recently named the New Mexico Space Valley Coalition a finalist for up to $160 million of those federal dollars.
The U.S. Economic Development Administration also has a Regional Technology and Innovation Hubs program that Sackett said there are a pair of New Mexico applications for, although she didn't go into more detail about those applications.
"We just want to be sure we're putting our hat in for all of those and not letting an opportunity go by," Sackett said.
Helping break down silos between industries is another focus of the expanded office's work. That includes stakeholders at universities, national laboratories and private companies across New Mexico, which Sackett said is "resource rich" in terms of science and technology.
That's a focus for Roadrunner Venture Studios, too, which wants to take technology out of universities and labs in the state and spin it into successful commercial companies. Roadrnunner's President Adam Hammer hit on that point in an interview with Business First in late June.
"The feedback that we've gotten from the science and tech ecosystem in New Mexico has been really positive," Sackett said. "People are really grateful to have some additional resources, and I think it's really important going forward."
