With new tech and science roadmap, New Mexico looks to turn research strength into economic growth 

Nora Meyers Sackett says New Mexico’s small, intertwined tech ecosystem can sometimes suffer from siloing itself.

But she hopes a newly released roadmap highlighting the state’s advancements from national labs and universities will help “clarify the path forward.”

“We’re going to work every single day to ensure that we are going down that path hand-in-hand with the ecosystem,” said Meyers Sackett, director of the state’s Technology and Innovation Office. “We can’t do it alone. It has to be done together.”

The Science and Technology Roadmap, released this month, identifies sectors where New Mexico has a competitive edge and charts how the state can capitalize on them. More specifically, the strategic plan aims to turn the state’s research strengths into long-term economic growth and high-paying jobs.

The roadmap’s creation follows the establishment of the Technology and Innovation Office earlier this year, spun out of the former Office of Strategy, Science and Technology. The team leads and executes programs encouraging the startup, growth and relocation of companies in the tech and science sectors.

The 158-page roadmap, put together by Ohio-based TEConomy Partners, outlines three powerhouse opportunities — quantum technologies, advanced energy, and aerospace and defense systems — and two emerging areas in biosciences and technologies linked to agriculture and water.

New Mexico has already made momentum on some of those fronts.

Qunnect, for instance, announced last month that it is building the state’s first quantum network, aiming to give companies and researchers working on quantum computers and sensors their own network on which to operate. Pacific Fusion in September said it will build its first research and manufacturing campus in Mesa del Sol, a $1 billion investment. And hypersonic missile manufacturer Castelion Corp. in November said it will bring a 1,000-acre campus to Sandoval County, creating up to 300 high-paying jobs.

Startups like YEEO, which creates sustainable solutions for global pest management, and Reprotox Biotech, a developer of models assessing the safety of drugs and chemicals, have already caught the state’s attention. The state recently awarded both companies, along with 17 other startups, $50,000 each in grants.

In order to transfer these opportunities into economic growth, the roadmap also highlights three investment actions. This includes establishing targeted industry centers, much like Roadrunner Venture Studios’ creation of its $25 million quantum hub in Albuquerque.

Additionally, the roadmap suggests that New Mexico should strengthen its innovation ecosystem by moving research from the labs into the commercial market, as well as expanding access to risk capital to increase nondilutive support for early stage startups.

“This is an opportunity where there is significant research that really has overlapping areas of interest, but the commercial market is maybe not quite there yet,” said TEConomy Managing Director Deborah Cummings. “But we know that these are global-leading challenges that continue to be positioned where there will be a market.”

The office launched a request for proposals in 2024 to complete analyses answering the question: “Which science and technology sectors is New Mexico most competitive in?”

After a competitive process, Meyers Sackett said the office chose TEConomy to complete the report. A “big name in science in tech,” she said the company’s previous experience with national labs helped tip the scales its way.

“That familiarity was one of many aspects about them that we liked,” Meyers Sackett said. “The labs are obviously an incredible asset to the state, but they’re also unique and present their own challenges as well in how they are able to be leveraged for economic development.”

Cummings said the roadmap’s creation process included talking to well over 100 stakeholders across the state. The company began the work last December and completed it in June.

“The economic advancement of New Mexico’s economy has long been driven by scientific innovation, really over the last 80 years,” Cummings said. “While I think people in New Mexico know that, I don’t know that people outside of New Mexico know that.”

Haoying Wang, associate professor of management at New Mexico Tech, said not many other states have created similar plans to New Mexico’s Science and Technology Roadmap.

“New Mexico is not the most developed state in the U.S., so you would expect other bigger states like California, New York, Texas (or) Florida to have similar plans, but they don’t,” Wang said. “We needed this kind of plan, regardless of which industry is on the list, to have a few targets to spend funding.”

To translate research into scalable, commercial products, Wang said the state needs more infrastructure — a weakness acknowledged in the roadmap — for growing companies to work. While Texas has multiple major cities and tech hubs, Albuquerque is the epicenter of New Mexican growth in the tech and science sectors.

The state has made recent strides in helping businesses expand in New Mexico. In April, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed two site-readiness bills into law, allowing the state to get a head start on developing infrastructure like utilities, roads and internet at prime development sites.

“One of the things the report specifically identifies is (the) lack of physical spaces to support the growth and scale-up of the startup community,” Meyers Sackett said.

Another hurdle identified in the roadmap is the challenge of bringing national lab research to the market, said Andrew Clark, co-founder and CEO of Hoonify Technologies.

“It was so difficult, even at labs where you have hundreds (of) millions of dollars of resources, there’s still huge constraints on those resources,” Clark, one of five Hoonify co-founders who previously worked at Sandia National Laboratories, said. “So, we left to commercialize our software.”

Hoonify’s software provides advanced simulation capabilities for the defense, energy and pharmaceutical industries, Clark said, touching on sectors identified in the roadmap. Hoonify’s product automates and integrates platforms commonly used by scientists and engineers to quicken processes, ultimately putting that capability in the “hands of anybody to use,” he said.

When Clark and the founding team left the lab in 2022, he said he had to figure out what resources and communities Hoonify could be integrated with.

“There were these disparate programs that you kind of had to figure out on your own; there wasn’t a one-stop shop to find them, but the community was active,” Clark said. “And then eventually, the state, though they had been active in a supportive role, officially came out and started doing more.”

Hoonify was one of the companies that TEConomy consulted with when creating the roadmap, Clark said. Now having a central point of focus for New Mexico’s desired direction, along with state leadership and support, he’s confident it will help build a healthy ecosystem.

“We are the U.S.’s best-kept secret,” Clark said.