RISE-UP has potential to boost state’s economy, create jobs and provide entrepreneurial opportunities for students
A new multimillion-dollar Navy grant called the Resilient Innovative Sustainable Economies via University Partnerships (RISE-UP) is helping students create their own companies—and spur the state’s innovation economy.
Name a state with a population of about a million people, that has miles of coastlines including many islands, and has traditionally generated much of its economy based on the ocean. If you said “Rhode Island,” you are only partly right.
Alaska and Hawaii also fit that description. While the states aren’t traditionally lumped together, all three are part of a new $2.4 million grant from the U.S. Navy called RISE-UP to fuel ocean innovation.
“They are all ocean states, so to speak,” says Peter Rumsey, the University of Rhode Island Research Foundation (URIRF) chief development officer, who serves as the program executive for the RISE-UP program in RI. “And they are all strategically important—even though you can fit like 400 Rhode Islands inside Alaska.”