By Brian Darmody: While the Maryland economy is facing budget uncertainties, the state can help surmount these challenges by growing private growth industries, converting research into jobs, connecting the region, and attracting federal funding from those few federal budgets (defense and economic competitiveness) that are likely to grow.
Here’s how:
Winning the technology race with China will be a bipartisan effort in Congress and with the White House and state of Maryland has a role to play. The Department of Defense (DOD) R&D budget is expected to grow, including its University Affiliated Research Centers (UARCs) that ensure essential engineering and technology capability are maintained.
Maryland and California are the only two states with two University Affiliated Research Centers (UARCs), but Maryland’s are proximate to each other. The JHU Applied Physics Lab UARC, located in southern Howard County, is closer to College Park than to JHU’s Baltimore campus. And the nation’s newest UARC and only one at an HBCU is located at Howard University in DC. The JHU APL has a budget of over $2 billion a year, and the UMD UARC received a $500 million grant, the largest ever received by UMD.
This largest cluster of DOD research needs to be exploited to develop new private companies in AI, quantum and data related technologies. The state is generating the workforce to accommodate these new industries. Both JHU and UMD College Park already rank in the top ten nationally of universities winning computer and information technology funding. UMD has the country’s largest campus-based computer science department. Both schools were listed in the Forbes 2024 list of twenty ‘New Ivies’—national colleges producing the achievers that employers are looking for. And nearly 50% of graduates from Maryland institutions have degrees related to STEM.
Converting research into jobs is another vital strategy. That’s why the Moore Administration’s $1B quantum initiative is important. ION Q is an offshoot of 25 years of research at UMD and NIST in quantum science. This spinout is the nation’s first publicly traded quantum company, and as a first mover in this rapidly changing technology, its future is bright.
Nations globally are investing billions of dollars in quantum research. Quantum computing has been identified by the incoming federal Administration as a national budget priority. NIST and NSA in Maryland are developing techniques and algorithms to protect against data decryption that will be possible as quantum computing matures. NIH and FDA will be at the forefront of new drugs and devices that a quantum future will develop. All four agencies are based in Maryland. And the new Maryland Secretary of Commerce with his cyber background with NSA and others is a superb catch to provide tech leadership in Maryland.
Finally, we need to connect the tech hubs in Maryland as our peers are doing in other states. For example, in Michigan, Detroit and Ann Arbor are working on an innovation corridor between the cities, linking U Michigan with other research universities in Detroit. Research Triangle Park in North Carolina is world renowned as a single research cluster, but Duke University is located approximately the same distance from North Carolina State University as UMD College Park is from JHU Homewood. But we don’t market the Baltimore Washington corridor as a single tech hub even though the percentage of Maryland’s economy supported by private and federal research and development spending is over twice that of North Carolina’s.
However, some new initiatives connecting the region are underway. The new Institute for Health Computing in Montgomery County with AI faculty from College Park linked with medical researchers from UMB and UM Medical System across the state will support the existing bio cluster in the Bethesda-I-270 corridor. This in turn will complement the new JHU AI facility planned for Remington in Baltimore City. The new $10 medical device center at the 4MLK facility in UMB Bio Park funded philanthropically by the St. John Foundation will link UM College Park bio engineers with UMB medical researchers. More of these types of efforts should be supported.
Maryland is already the number one state in the nation in the percentage of its domestic state product based on university research funding. Converting that research to jobs, building stronger regional partnerships, and encouraging private sector entrepreneurship is the path Maryland needs to take.
Brian Darmody is Chief Strategy Officer for Association of University Research Parks, a nonprofit international membership organization with offices in College Park Maryland and Tempe Arizona. Previously Darmody served in various executive outreach roles at UMD College Park and University System of Maryland