California Tops NSF State Profiles
March 7, 2005

The National Science Foundation's online center of state science and engineering profiles ranks California at the top of almost every one of its 31 state indicators, where applicable. The site was recently updated to include data from 2001-2003, and provides access to a PDF or downloadable Microsoft Excel Worksheet for each state. A spreadsheet with summary statistics for the entire U.S. also is available. The information was compiled from several Federal agencies, including NSF, the Small Business Administration, and the departments of Commerce, Education and Labor.

According to the NSF data, California has more doctoral scientists and doctoral engineers than any other U.S. state: 70,650 California doctoral scientists out of a total 542,940 nationwide and 21,040 California doctoral engineers out of a total 112,760 (2001 data). California has also awarded more science and engineering doctorates, with 3,232 science and engineering doctorates awarded in 2002, compared to a national total of 24,558. California also ranks first in the number of science and engineering postdoctorates and the number of graduate students in doctorate-granting institutions (2002 data).

California has more industry and academic R&D than any state in America, with about 40 billion in industry R&D and 4.9 billion in academic R&D in 2002. Californians were awarded 3,923 SBIR grants from 1999 to 2002, more than any other state, and received more utility patents in 2002, 18,829, over one-fifth of all utility patents issued that year nationwide.

For California's complete science and engineering profile, go to http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/nsf05301/tables/ca.xls.

For NSF's Science and Engineering State Profiles: 2001-2003, go to http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/SRS/nsf05301/start.htm..

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