Blake Anderson

This strategic plan outlines the mission and focus areas for Gulf Blue Connect, aiming to accelerate the development and commercialization of dual-use maritime and river technologies to strengthen security, resilience, and economic growth. Key focus areas include River-Gulf Innovation, Defense & Security, Resilience, and Entrepreneurship & Workforce. The initiative seeks to extend the Gulf Blue Navigator inland and position Mississippi as a leader in research translation, fostering collaboration across federal, academic, and industry partners to drive innovation and impact.

This strategic plan outlines the direction for University Libraries, University of Southern Mississippi, to support the university's mission and foster intellectual development, diversity, and creativity. Its main strategic pillars include engaging communities, ensuring accessible collections and spaces, embracing emerging technologies, fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion, developing and retaining employees, and building robust collections. The plan aims to advance student success, support world-class research, and empower the university community to create new knowledge and thrive in a global society.

The Mississippi Center for Innovation and Technology (MCITy), in partnership with the Mississippi Research Consortium (MRC), aims to develop nationally competitive research programs. Key areas of focus include fostering research collaborations with federal partners like the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) and the Navy, advancing technologies to meet the Department of Defense's needs, and accelerating technology transfer and entrepreneurship through the MRC partnership with ERDCWERX. Noteworthy accomplishments include leading the build-out of MRC office space at MCITy, signing a CRADA with the Commander, Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command (CNMOC), and coordinating Multi-Domain Operations MCITy Demo.