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White House announces 300-mln-USD investment to power American innovation

Xinhua, October 14, 2016 Adjust font size:

The White House on Thursday announced that it will provide more than 300 million U.S. dollars in new investment to support science and technology as part of its efforts to "power American innovation."

The announcement opened a day-long White House Frontiers Conference in Pittsburgh, which was hosted by President Barack Obama and brought together hundreds of the nation's researchers, entrepreneurs and students to discuss challenges in personal, local, national, global, and interplanetary frontiers for the next 50 years and beyond.

According to a White House statement, the money included 70 million dollars in new National Institutes of Health investments to help researchers better understand the brain and diseases as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, depression, and traumatic brain injury.

Meanwhile, 16 million dollars and four new partners will be added to the U.S. Precision Medicine Initiative, which has a goal of tailoring treatment of diseases to the individual patient. It will double the number of regional medical health care organizations that will enroll individuals into this health study.

About 165 million dollars in public and private funds will go to smart city programs that will use technology and data to tackle challenges such as traffic congestion.

The Obama administration will also provide 50 million dollars in federal funds to "fuel a revolution in small-satellite technology that could provide capabilities such as ubiquitous high-speed Internet connectivity and continuously updated imagery of the Earth."

The statement also said the administration has started collaborating with private companies to build deep-space habitats in which U.S. astronauts will live to help meet the president's goal of sending a human mission to Mars by the 2030s.

The White House also said that two programs that harness "the power of data to improve the U.S. criminal justice system" -- the Police Data Initiative and the Data-Driven Justice Initiative -- have both grown to over 100 communities nationwide.

Additionally, the White House announced a new space-weather executive order signed by Obama to coordinate efforts to prepare the nation for space-weather events. Endit