The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration has assigned 31 regions across the nation as "Tech Hubs" and Pittsburgh isn't one of them.
It's a loss for the region that comes despite a biotech-focused pitch that looked to catalyze several local groups under one mission to obtain such a designation, which could have brought with it tens of millions of dollars in federal funding.
In a statement awarding the designations, the White House did not disclose specific reasons as to why Pittsburgh or the hundreds of other pitches didn't make the cut.
The pitch for the Pittsburgh area, part of an initiative led by the University of Pittsburgh and InnovatePGH, among others, as part of the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Alliance, included creating a Tech Hub focused on the region's assets in advanced manufacturing, life sciences and artificial intelligence.
But despite the lack of designation from the federal government, the broader ambitions of the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Alliance will continue on as alternative funding means—be it governmental, philanthropic or otherwise—are sought.
"It is an opportunity that is now different than we were hoping," Sean Luther, executive director of InnovatePGH, said. "There's nothing keeping the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Alliance from continuing down the path to develop our initial proposal into the backbone of the life sciences and biomanufacturing strategy for the region."
Luther said Megan Shaw, the interim executive director of the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Alliance, will oversee much of that work after formerly serving as the managing director of life sciences at Pittsburgh-based seed-stage startup investment firm Innovation Works Inc. A lot of this effort hedges on unifying the efforts behind the University of Pittsburgh's BioForge Biomanufacturing Center that's being built in Hazelwood Green as well as the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, among others.
But also worth pointing out, according to Luther, is a likelihood that many Tech Hub designees won't get the tens of millions of dollars that they are seeking to build out their pitches as part of the initiative's second phase.
That's different from the federal Build Back Better Regional Challenge, which granted funding to all phase one awardees to further realize their pitches, Luther said. The Pittsburgh-targeted Build Back Better Regional Challenge pitch went on to net $62.7 million in federal funding for local robotics- and robotics-adjacent industrial creation, but not every region in that challenge got this level of funding.
These regions nevertheless went on to continue their plans despite this and that's something that can be followed for Pittsburgh in regards to this Tech Hub instance, he added.
"I think we can learn from [other region's Back Better Regional Challenge] setbacks and make this a short-term hiccup, but a long-term continuance of the strategy for the region," Luther said. "We had U.S. senators working on this application for us. We had our local elected delegations agitating at the state and the national level for us. I think everyone was really in the trenches and we're going to continue to capitalize on that energy to push that cluster strategy forward."
It's a sentiment that's also being backed by the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, a nonprofit organization focused on spurring economic development across a 10-county region centered on Pittsburgh.
"We are confident in our ability to continue to build off our competitive advantages — two Tier 1 research universities, two major hospital systems, more than 160 regional life sciences establishments employing over 7,300 people in our region and more than $1 million in research dollars awarded to life sciences—to position our region to become a leading biomanufacturing hub," Allegheny Conference on Community Development CEO Stefani Pashman said in a prepared statement. "We remain unwavering in our commitment to establish and maintain a domestic supply chain for biomanufacturing and will continue to innovate and collaborate to unite our strengths to reach this collective goal for the region."
Nearly 400 groups applied for the Tech Hub designation nationally. Regions selected for this first phase of the Tech Hubs program, an act being authorized via the $280 billion federal CHIPS and Science Act, will be able to apply for funding amounts between $40 million and $70 million each out of a $500 million national allocation that will fund the various feats these Tech Hubs are looking to accomplish.
The group behind the Greater Philadelphia Region Precision Medicine Tech Hub pitch is the only entity consisting of representatives from Pennsylvania that garnered the designation.
