Contacts: Mike Rush, Executive Director and CEO

mike.rush@sdbor.edu

Janelle Toman, Director of Communications

Janelle.toman@sdbor.edu

Telephone: (605) 773-3455

Fax: (605) 773-5320

www.sdbor.edu

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:  Tuesday, August 4, 2015

Public University Research Grants Stimulate Economic Development

PIERRE, S.D. – Four public universities have received research and development innovation grants through the South Dakota Board of Regents.

“The R&D Innovation Grant program is designed to assist institutions in making strategic investments in research and development activities that will stimulate economic development in the state,” said Mike Rush, the Board of Regents’ executive director and CEO. “Strengthening South Dakota’s research infrastructure is a critical component to growing our knowledge-based economy and advancing industry sectors identified in the 2020 Vision, The South Dakota Science and Innovation Strategy.”  

Black Hills State University, South Dakota School of Mines & Technology, South Dakota State University, and the University of South Dakota received a total of $700,000. The grant awards were distributed as follows:

• $110,454 to Black Hills State University to procure equipment for the Black Hills State Underground Campus, located at the 4850-foot level of the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead.
   
• $200,000 to South Dakota School of Mines & Technology to make strategic investments in three projects that will strengthen School of Mines’ research and development infrastructure in materials processing and bio-imaging. 
   
• $189,546 to South Dakota State University to support a collaboration with Sanford Health to enhance research and development on human nutrition, food technologies, behavior-related food choices, and collection and analysis of complex datasets.
   
• $200,000 to the University of South Dakota to acquire, deploy, and maintain a high-performance computing cluster to enable the next generation of computationally assisted research at USD. 
   

Go to http://sdepscor.org/2020vision/ for more information about 2020 Vision: The South Dakota Science and Innovation Strategy.