NSF Engines Development Award: Advancing food security and climate resilience (MS)

这一区域创新引擎发展奖的重点是缓解密西西比州中部和南部的41个县目标服务区的粮食不安全和相关的健康差距。该地区包括该国一些人口结构最多样化、经济最困难的县。根据美国农业部的数据，该地区25个县的特点是持续贫困。杰克逊州立大学(JSU)将与南密西西比大学(USM)合作，领导可持续创新生态系统(SIE)食品工业生态系统的发展，以计划的方式释放社区人才，建立融合的食品产业集群，并调整创新节点，通过创建可持续的创新循环来激励、成长和推出新的新兴技术和企业。联合苏黎世州立大学和密苏里州立大学的资源、专业知识和经验，以及它们的地区产业和经济发展伙伴，能够很好地构建一个创新生态系统，以协调研究和创新，以解决三个相互关联的领域的差距：1)农业和食品获取；2)中小型农场的先进技术和气候适应能力；以及3)农业供应链。NSF引擎发展奖的愿景是发展一个创新的生态系统：改善健康和营养，减少贫困，创造一个由熟练技术工人组成的多元化人才库，并提高目标服务地区的经济多样性和弹性。受使用启发的研究和开发将涉及并遵循获得营养食品的五个方面：可负担性、可获得性、可及性、住宿性和可接受性。这些目标将围绕改善所有密西西比州人的复原力和健康结果，让利益相关者做好准备，评估、管理和缓解代际贫困和持续的粮食不安全的复杂和毁灭性现实。该奖项可以通过重点创造高质量的就业机会、战略性劳动力投资和培训、小企业创造以及目标公司的区域集群，创造新的就业机会，促进区域内的经济公平。NSF引擎开发奖将使该项目能够发展和加强领导团队及其与整个地区当地和区域成员和组织的多部门合作伙伴关系，支持围绕STEM劳动力发展的翻译研究活动、农村参与、干预计划和招聘工作的具体计划的制定，并使用成功的量化指标，以及每个利益相关者的需求分析和解决这些需求的计划，为NSF引擎项目做准备。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，认为值得支持。

This Regional Innovation Engines Development Award is focused on alleviating food insecurities and associated health disparities in the 41-county target service region that incorporates significant portions of central and southern Mississippi. The region includes some of the country's most demographically diverse and economically challenged counties. Twenty-five of the region’s counties are characterized by persistent poverty, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In partnership with the University of Southern Mississippi (USM), Jackson State University (JSU) will lead the development of the Sustainable Innovation Ecosystem (SIE) Food Industry ecosystem to unlock talents of the community programmatically, establish convergent food industry clusters, and align nodes of innovation to inspire, grow and launch new emerging technologies and businesses by creating a sustainable cycle of innovation. The resources, expertise, and experience of JSU and USM, combined with their regional industry and economic development partners, are well-positioned to build an innovation ecosystem to align research and innovation to address gaps in three interrelated areas of interest: 1) Agriculture and food access; 2) Advanced technology and climate resilience for small-and mid-sized farms; and 3) Agricultural supply chain. The vision of this NSF Engine Development Award is to develop an innovative ecosystem that: improves health and nutrition, reduces poverty, creates a diverse talent pool of skilled technical workers, and improves economic diversity and resilience across the targeted service region. Use-inspired research and development will address and be guided by the five dimensions of access to nutritious food: affordability, availability, accessibility, accommodation, and acceptability. The goals will be centered around improving the resilience and health outcomes of all Mississippians by preparing stakeholders to assess, manage, and mitigate the complex and devastating realities of generational poverty and persistent food insecurity. The award can create new jobs that advance economic equity within the region by focusing on creating high-quality job opportunities, strategic workforce investment and training, small-business creation, and regional clustering of target firms. This NSF Engine Development award will enable the project to develop and enhance the Leadership Team and its multi-sectoral partnerships with local and regional constituents and organizations throughout the region, supporting the development of concrete plans for translational research activities, rural engagement, intervention plans, and recruitment efforts around STEM workforce development with quantitative metrics for success, and an analysis of needs from each stakeholder and a plan to address them in preparation for an NSF Engine project.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.