The City of Newport and the Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) Division Newport today signed the Partnership Intermediary Agreement (PIA) to support economic development and job creation initiatives in Newport.

This agreement, the first of its kind in Rhode Island, was signed by Newport Mayor Jeanne-Marie Napolitano and NUWC Newport Commanding Officer Captain Howard S. Goldman at a ceremony in City Hall.  The PIA is an outgrowth of the efforts of the Newport City Council and City Administration to generate job growth through creation of an innovation hub centered on ocean, marine developments, resilience, sea-level rise, climate change and associated defense related projects.

“I think it’s an important linking with the technology and commercialization of activities in NUWC directly with City of Newport,” said City of Newport Mayor Jeanne-Marie Napolitano.  “What we’re trying to do particularly on the North End is to innovate and produce some really good economic futures for our young people and develop business opportunities so in that respect it falls right into line with the goals that we’ve set for Newport the last three to four years.”
“I’d just like to add to what the Mayor said and note that any partnership, successful partnership, is a win-win and a mutual benefit for both parties, and from the NUWC side, we just had the Secretary of Defense here yesterday”” said Commanding Officer of NUWCDIV Newport-Howard Goldman.  “And when he was here he stressed how our competitors are innovating very quickly and they embrace technology and they understand that things are moving faster. For us at NUWC we have a very large breadth and depth of engineering and scientists but we need partnership with industry, we need partnership with small business and from outside of the defense line. And what this does is this helps us with a vehicle to work outside of NUWC to bring in these innovators. The other thing of course we struggle with is to bring in young talent because the technology sector especially outside of government is very competitive so anything we can do here to get young people interested in science and technology and math is very important because we need to start early and the students in Rhode Island and in this area are just as capable more so than any others so if we can get them interested and either have them work in the industry as partners with us or in NUWC that’s a big win for us.”

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