Why Wisconsin Won $49 Million Tech Hub Grant

Mike Hoge, senior vice president for global operations at Accuray, takes Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), center, and Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. CEO Missy Hughes, right, on a tour of the company in August. Accuray, part of the Wisconsin biohealth tech hub, makes radiation treatment equipment. (Erik Gunn | Wisconsin Examiner)

When Wisconsin got picked for its proposal to develop a technology hub and a $49 million federal investment, the state had a few things going for it.

One was that the Badger State already had an established and growing technology sector that it proposed to develop further. Another was that it wasn’t already the center of attention — or largesse — for its work.

For Wisconsin, the established area was biohealth and personalized medicine: crafting new diagnostic and treatment technologies that fit with a patient’s distinctive genetic characteristics.

The state’s biohealth sector is Wisconsin’s beneficiary of the federal technology hub program, a national industrial policy aimed at building up important sectors in the U.S. economy.

“We weren’t looking to build a tech ecosystem from scratch,” said Cristina Killingsworth of the Economic Development Administration in the U.S. Department of Commerce, in an interview Monday. “We wanted regions from the country to identify areas where they already were excellent, where targeted federal investment could make them world-class.”

Wisconsin fit the bill with “an incredibly robust ecosystem in the biotech space already,” said Killingsworth. “We would just be accelerating that rather than building it.”

At the same time, the state wasn’t already in the national spotlight for its work.

The point of the tech hub program “is really about making sure we maintain our technological edge, with the idea that we can’t do so if we’re only investing in the same handful of cities over and over again,” Killingsworth said. “This program is about investing in all parts of the United States, because we can’t be competitive unless we take advantage of everything that this country has to offer.”

The technology hub program is part of the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act. The wide-ranging bipartisan legislation, passed by Congress and signed by President Joe Biden, was enacted to bring computer chip manufacturers and related technology industries back to the U.S. from overseas.

The technology hub program made it into the legislation at the encouragement of Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.). It drew on a 2019 Brookings Institution paper that called for fostering “innovation hubs” around the country based on local industrial strengths.

Killingsworth, the acting assistant secretary of commerce for economic development, was in Wisconsin this week as the keynote speaker for an annual conference put on by BioForward Wisconsin, a nonprofit umbrella group for the state’s biohealth industry.

BioForward CEO Lisa Johnson said the annual conference was larger this year.

“It is really to put Wisconsin on the map and to prove we can protect and be supportive of national and economic security and make the United States more competitive in the future,” Johnson said.

Another qualifying feature of Wisconsin’s tech hub proposal was its case for serving the broader community.

Proposals were required to demonstrate that a tech hub’s benefits would “accrue equitably” Killingsworth told the Wisconsin Examiner, “with a particular focus on ensuring that underserved communities could benefit from the tech hub and have a voice in the governance of the tech hub.”

The Universities of Wisconsin system, the UW-Madison and the Medical College of Wisconsin, as well as the state technical college system, are all integral to the Wisconsin project, as research partners but particularly as part of developing the workforce that participating industries require.

Government and economic development agencies are all key components along with private industry, Killingsworth said, because the ultimate goal is for the tech hub to produce a marketable product or service.

“This program is also about commercialization,” she said. “It’s not an R&D [research and development] program, it really is about how can we make sure that the businesses that are advancing technologies of the  future grow and remain here in the United States.”

And while private industry is essential, government has a role to play as well.

One way that the Wisconsin tech hub is designed to benefit the broader community is through its planned development of a Wisconsin health database. That will include “getting the data from populations that we may not have gathered through other means,” said Wendy Harris of the Wisconsin Biohealth Tech Hub, where she holds the title of regional innovation officer.

There is also a screening program that will focus on areas of “social and economic deprivation” including tribal communities and residents of impoverished ZIP codes, “which may not happen without some type of federal funding,” Harris said.

“There are certain market gaps, market failures, that it sometimes is incumbent upon outside entities to step in and fill,” Killingsworth said. Government support can help smaller suppliers and manufacturers gain entry “that might otherwise not have access to testing, to lab equipment.”

The result, Killingsworth said, is “more inclusive of private entities that otherwise might not even have a leg up to be able to start the companies that we need to grow and remain in the United States to be commercializing technology that’s critical for our economic and national security.”

How Wisconsin’s biohealth project made it to the finish line for federal funds was originally published by Wisconsin Examiner.