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1. Expand Underrepresented Participation in High-Tech Start-Ups.

   Ivanitzki, Teddy; Johnson Rashida (February 2023, 2023 Conference for Industry and Education Collaboration (CIEC))

   CIEC panel (Ed.)

   Abstract: When starting small businesses, particularly in high-tech sectors like artificial intelligence (AI), digital twins, or the Internet of Things (IoT), women and underrepresented minority groups face additional hurdles in securing funding and investment. Not only is such a discrepancy in investment socially unjust, but it deprives the US of the advantages in innovation and global competition that could stem from the widening participation of the underrepresented population in innovative sectors. Although targeted support to women and underrepresented minority-owned businesses is being provided by the federal government and the private sector, more remains to be done to close the investment gap. The US Small Business Administration (SBA, 2013) provides more than $3.5 billion in funding to over 5,000 startups per year through its Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs. Moreover, the Small Business Act provides these programs with a mandate to target women and underrepresented minority groups. Despite this mandate from SBA, only 15% of those funds went to minority-owned companies (SBA, 2013). Funding opportunities from the private sector tell a similar story. Diversity VC, a non-profit partnership promoting diversity in Venture Capital, reported in 2019 that in a comprehensive survey (Azevedo, 2019) of around 10,000 founders receiving venture capital backing, only 9% were women and a mere 1% were Black. In order to i) accelerate innovation and increase participation of under-represented minorities in start-ups of “new industry”, and ii) to ensure US competitiveness in the global market, in 2010, the National Science Foundation (NSF) introduced the Small Business Postdoctoral Research Diversity Fellowship (SBPRDF) program and selected the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) to administer the program. In recognition of ASEE’s successful performance in meeting the objectives of the SBPRDF program, in 2019 NSF/IIP (Industrial Innovation and Partnerships) program leadership selected ASEE to administer the Innovative Postdoctoral Entrepreneurial Research Fellowship (IPERF) program. The overarching goal of the IPERF program is to emphasize and strengthen the entrepreneurial development of underrepresented Fellows. The IPERF program also aims to advance best practices in postdoctoral programs and impart cross-disciplinary expertise in the application of new technologies like AI and IoT in “new industries” based on bioengineering and biochemistry technologies. 

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2. Immigrant Entrepreneurs and Innovation in the U.S. High-Tech Sector

   https://doi.org/10.3386/w25565  

   Brown, J. David; Earle, John S.; Kim, Mee Jung; Lee, Kyung Min (January 2020, The Roles of Immigrants and Foreign Students in US Science, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship edited by Ina Ganguli, Shulamit Kahn and Megan MacGarvie University of Chicago Press, 2020)

   We estimate differences in innovation behavior between foreign versus U.S.-born entrepreneurs in high-tech industries. Our data come from the Annual Survey of Entrepreneurs, a random sample of firms with detailed information on owner characteristics and innovation activities. We find uniformly higher rates of innovation in immigrant-owned firms for 15 of 16 different innovation measures; the only exception is for copyright/trademark. The immigrant advantage holds for older firms as well as for recent start-ups and for every level of the entrepreneur’s education. The size of the estimated immigrant-native differences in product and process innovation activities rises with detailed controls for demographic and human capital characteristics but falls for R&D and patenting. Controlling for finance, motivations, and industry reduces all coefficients, but for most measures and specifications immigrants are estimated to have a sizable advantage in innovation. 

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3. Evaluating tomato production in open-field and high-tech greenhouse systems

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.130459  

   Maureira, Fidel; Rajagopalan, Kirti; Stöckle, Claudio O. (February 2022, Journal of Cleaner Production)
4. Finding the Low Tech, High Impact Solution to Computational Thinking Instruction

   Tackett, T.; Stevens, M.; Dotson, M. (August 2023, Digital Promise Blog https://digitalpromise.org/2023/08/22/finding-the-low-tech-high-impact-solution-to-computational-thinking-instruction/)

   Key ideas: Computational thinking and computer science can be taught to students in primary grades using low tech tools. Teacher leaders from rural Appalachia conducted a professional development training that supported other educators in their community. Learning computational thinking and computer science in the primary grades is important for setting a foundation that can be built upon throughout middle and high school. 

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5. Can Smartness Fail? The Charisma of High Tech as Class Politics

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3715336.3735732  

   Tandon, Udayan; Irani, Lilly; Fox, Sarah E; Khovanskaya, Vera (July 2025, ACM)