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

这个区域创新引擎发展奖的重点是减轻41个县的目标服务区，包括中部和南部密西西比的重要部分粮食不安全和相关的健康差距。该地区包括该国一些人口最多样化和经济挑战的县。根据美国农业部的数据，该地区有25个县的特点是持续贫困。与南密西西比大学（USM）合作，杰克逊州立大学（JSU）将领导可持续创新生态系统（SIE）食品工业生态系统的发展，以计划性地释放社区人才，建立融合的食品工业集群，并通过创建可持续的创新周期来调整创新节点，以激励，发展和推出新的新兴技术和业务。JSU和USM的资源，专业知识和经验，以及他们的区域行业和经济发展合作伙伴，有能力建立一个创新生态系统，以调整研究和创新，以解决三个相关领域的差距：1）农业和粮食获取; 2）先进技术和中小型农场的气候适应能力;和3）农业供应链。NSF发动机开发奖的愿景是开发一个创新的生态系统，以改善健康和营养，减少贫困，创造多样化的熟练技术工人人才库，并提高目标服务区域的经济多样性和弹性。受粮食计划署启发的研究和开发将解决获得营养食品的五个方面并以此为指导：负担能力、可获得性、可获得性、便利性和可接受性。这些目标将围绕提高所有密西西比人的复原力和健康成果，帮助利益相关者评估、管理和缓解世代贫困和持续粮食不安全的复杂和毁灭性现实。该奖项可以创造新的就业机会，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，小企业创造和目标公司的区域集群，促进该地区的经济公平。这个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的地方和区域选民和组织的多部门合作伙伴关系，支持围绕STEM劳动力发展的转化研究活动，农村参与，干预计划和招聘工作的具体计划的制定，并提供成功的量化指标，该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.