URIs_MOMENTUM_Research_and_Innovation_Magazine_Fall_2022_Mel

“We stopped competing and started collaborating, and then suddenly magic started to happen.”

- Peter Rumsey

about a “blue tech” innovation center, says Peter Rumsey, who helped implement that effort for the state under then-Governor Gina Raimondo. In May 2021, he became chief development officer of the URI Research Foundation, a nonprofit affiliated with the University, convening a Blue Economy Working Group along with the economic development agency Rhode Island Commerce to explore how various groups in the state could work together. “For a long time, we’ve had a proud history as the Ocean State, but the assets have been pretty siloed,” Rumsey says. “What we’ve seen happen in the last two years is everyone coming together as a coalition and creating a vision. We stopped competing and started collaborating, and then suddenly magic started to happen.” The coalition grew to 125 partners, including private industry, educational institutions, nonprofits, and state and local government agencies—eventually calling itself the Blue Economy Technology Cluster (BETC). The group has converged around several projects of mutual benefit, including a SmartBay, which would coordinate advanced sensing equipment throughout Narragansett Bay, and a Blue Technology Innovation Center, housed on URI’s Bay Campus to incubate ocean-based startups. The effort coalesced around an application for a Build Back Better Challenge grant from the federal government—part of the American Rescue Plan passed under President Joe Biden—that promised up to $100 million to coalitions to grow their state’s economies. BETC proposed a $70 million plan with nine separate projects focused on the Blue Economy, and in December 2021 beat out 500 applicants to become one of 60 finalists for an award, receiving $500,000 to further develop its application. Ultimately, the proposal wasn’t one of the 21 winners of the grants announced in March 2022—but after all the work it did in developing

Warren, Rhode Island harbor.

PETER RUMSEY Chief Development Officer URI Research Foundation

the application, the coalition has vowed to forge ahead in supporting the key projects that had been proposed. “Although we’re disappointed in the outcome, the past year has been incredible in bringing together more than 120 partners around the state, including our own state government in a way that has never been done before,” says Snyder.

BETC has currently identified $23 million in state and

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