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Five of NCDMM’s Founding Ohio Members in NAMII Honored as a 2013 Team Northeast Ohio Economic Development Plus Award
July 15, 2013 | Categories: America Makes News
Youngstown, Ohio — July 15, 2013. NAMII, the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute, awarded on August 2012, and driven by the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining (NCDMM), proudly announces that five of its founding Ohio members were cited as a 2013 Team Northeast Ohio (NEO) Economic Development Plus Award finalist at an awards event held on July 11th at the InterContinental Hotel Cleveland.
Team NEO honored Case Western Reserve University, MAGNET, NorTech, JumpStart Ohio, and Youngstown State University with its Asset Creation Award for their role in the successful development of a marketable feature or asset that makes the region more attractive for business development in Northeast Ohio. These five founding Ohio NAMII members were among others from across the “Tech Belt” region of Eastern Ohio, including the Youngstown Business Incubator (YBI), Western Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, and a national level that partnered with NCDMM on its proposal for the award and management of NAMII.
NAMII, headquartered in Youngstown and managed by NCDMM, is the pilot institute for up to 15 National Network for Manufacturing Innovation (NNMI) institutes. It is a public-private partnership with member organizations from industry, academia, government, and workforce development resources. Driven by NCDMM, NAMII serves as the nationally recognized additive manufacturing center of innovation excellence that will help to transform the U.S. manufacturing sector; yield significant advancements in the defense, energy, space, and commercial industries; and increase domestic manufacturing competitiveness.
“On behalf of NCDMM and NAMII, I want to extend our congratulations to the five Ohio NAMII members for being the recipients of a 2013 Team NEO Economic Development Plus Award,” said Ralph Resnick, President and Executive Director of NCDMM and the Founding Director of NAMII. “By these members working together along with the outstanding staff from YBI and NCDMM’s other partners, these awardees each made substantial contributions to NCDMM’s proposal and subsequent award of NAMII. This citation awarded by Team NEO exemplifies the success of NCDMM’s vision for bringing together a renowned team from research universities, community colleges, industry, non-profit organizations, and professional societies from across the Tech Belt region and beyond to create an institute in Youngstown that is a national asset significantly different than that of a traditional research institute.”
Ed Morris, NCDMM Vice President and NAMII Director, added “I am absolutely delighted in Team NEO’s recognition of not only NAMII’s economic and entrepreneurial impact in the area, but also the work of the five awardees and all our NAMII members in the Tech Belt region of Eastern Ohio, Western Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, and across the nation.”
The Team NEO Economic Development Plus Awards program is committed to recognizing organizations that have made a creative, significant contribution to the economic development of the Cleveland Plus region, which includes Akron, Canton, and Youngstown. The Plus Awards program recognizes economic development efforts throughout the 18-county region of Northeast Ohio that have helped to retain companies, create jobs, and bring foreign investment to the region. This is the only event in Northeast Ohio that honors regional economic development success.
The Team NEO Economic Development award is the second prestigious economic development citation awarded to NCDMM, NAMII, and NAMII members this year.
In January 2013, NAMII was also named as one of the top ten most innovative economic development initiatives in the United States by The Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program and The Rockefeller Foundation. This year’s list of “Innovations to Watch” represents the most forward-thinking and effective solutions that are now being implemented by America’s states and metropolitan areas in the arenas of low carbon, exports, human capital, innovation, and governance. The innovations are part of the Brookings-Rockefeller Project on State and Metropolitan Innovation, which presents fiscally-responsible state policies and practical metropolitan-led solutions that leaders can use to move toward the next economy.