Opportunity Amplified

Mississippi is emerging as the Southeast’s new center for advanced technology and innovation-based companies.

Our state is investing for future growth, and we know that begins with talent. Currently, there are more than 87,000 Mississippians working in high-tech industries throughout the state. And our Mississippi research institutions were awarded more than $536 million in R&D expenditures for FY2019, up from $479 million in FY2018.

How Relativity Space is partnering with Mississippi to bring greater speed and efficiency to rocket manufacturing and testing.

With Relativity Space’s decision to locate its newest manufacturing facility at Mississippi’s John C. Stennis Space Center, the aerospace innovator will have the ability to build rocket components on-site at the nation’s premier rocket propulsion test facility.

Relativity Space is the first and only company to integrate metal 3D printing, robotics and software into the rocket manufacturing process, allowing the company to build and launch rockets in days instead of years. By bringing production and testing together, the company will have the ability to quickly test and refine its designs at the same site, greatly reducing lead time to launch.

“We look forward to working together to bring more innovation, economic development and job growth to the Gulf Coast and progressing American space leadership. The integration of our 3D printing rocket production and testing facilities on one site will enable Relativity to offer greater flexibility to commercial and government entities needing faster, more frequent and lower-cost access to space.“

– Jordan Noone, Relativity Co-Founder and CTO

Project Stats

Expansion of E4 Test Complex with a build-out of four additional
upgraded test cells
Lease of 220,000-square-foot facility with 80-foot-high bay and
industrial capability
190 new skilled jobs created
Projected $59 million in capital investment

Stylized coronavirus in what appears to be a liquid or gas

Fighting COVID-19’s spread with Mississippi scientists and supercomputers.

It takes information, expertise and raw computing power to fight a deadly enemy like COVID-19. That’s why the U.S. Department of Defense turned to researchers and supercomputers in Mississippi to model, analyze and provide research support in the fight against the deadly virus.

At the U.S. Army Corps of Engineer’s in Vicksburg, the Engineer Research and Development Center’ (ERDC) High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP) is engaged in a number of important COVID-related research programs.

ERDC researchers first developed the ERDC-SEIR (Susceptible, Exposed, Infectious, Recovered) disease model to predict how the novel coronavirus would spread. The model is one of several models used by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for its projections.

In addition to disease forecasting, ERDC supercomputers are being used to conduct virtual drug screenings of potential COVID-19 vaccines. The goal of the program is to use HPCMP resources at ERDC and other installations to examine 40 million target compounds to rapidly evaluate vaccine candidates.

HPCMP Stats

HPCMP supports the White House Office of Science and Technology (OST) High-Performance Computing (HPC) COVID-19 Consortium.
Installation: Cray “Onyx” supercomputer (15,000 cores).
This system is set up outside the sensitive “official use only” environment and can easily support academia on short notice.

Google searched for the perfect workforce for the company’s first U.S. operations center and found it in Mississippi.

When you’re one of the world’s largest and most innovative companies, you don’t make site selection decisions without careful forethought.

For Google, Mississippi’s workforce was critical to their decision to locate in Southhaven. The company expects to hire 100 workers for the new center, which will provide support services for the Google’s global customer base. Expected to open in 2021, the new 60,000-square-foot facility will be the company’s first American operations center, expanding on existing support operations in India and the Philippines.

Google’s decision to locate the company’s new operations center in Mississippi reflects growing interest in “inshoring” among global businesses. Increasingly, knowledge industry companies are finding that you can provide superior service to customers while benefiting from the strong workforce, affordable business costs, and pro-business policies available in our state.

“The new site will give us the opportunity to hire amazing local talent and we are confident that the Southaven community will be a great home for our Operations Center.”

–Troy Dickerson, Vice President – Google Operations Center

Project Stats

Lease of 60,000-square-foot facility in Southaven
100 new skilled jobs created
Expected opening date: Summer, 2021

Why Amazon choose Mississippi twice in less than a year for the company’s newest fulfillment center.

Amazon is the world’s largest online retailer. So, naturally, the company can afford to be very particular when it comes to selecting sites.

Mississippi proved to offer the perfect combination of benefits, prompting the company to select the state for two new fulfillment centers in just 10 months, first in Marshall County and then in nearby Olive Branch.

In Mississippi, Amazon found the perfect location for shipping products throughout the Southeast, thanks to the state’s excellent multimodal transportation infrastructure, Class-A logistics parks, and talented workforce. With these qualifications, it’s no wonder northwest Mississippi has become one of the country’s fastest-growing destinations for the distribution and logistics industry.

“Mississippi has proven itself to be a great place for Amazon to do business and gives us the opportunity to better serve our customers in the region.”

– Alicia Boler Davis, Vice President of Global Customer Fulfillment

Project Stats

Leased property: 554,000 square-feet (Marshall County), 1,000,000 square-feet
(Olive Branch)
1,300 jobs (combine) projected
$700 million in job training to be provided

Learn more about Mississippi’s knowledge economy.

Unmanned systems

Mississippi State University (MSU) is home to the FAA’s UAS
Center of Excellence (COE). The COE is conducting research
with companies like Amazon to develop a vision for an unmanned aerial systems (UAS) superhighway.
MSU’s Raspet Flight Research Laboratory is the nation’s leading academic research institute dedicated exclusively to the advancement of Unmanned Aircraft Systems.
Our FAA approved testing areas and less densely populated
regions offer ample restricted and warning airspace while
mitigating safety concerns and allowing for multiple testing
applications with no need for travel and transport.
Stennis Space Center is NASA’s Shared Service Center, which
hosts several federal, state, academic and private organizations and technology-based companies.
Key manufacturers include Aurora Flight Sciences, Northrop
Grumman Unmanned Systems and Stark Aerospace.

Advanced materials

The University of Southern Mississippi (USM) School of Polymer Science and Engineering is a multidisciplinary STEM field focused on polymers. The undergraduate program is accredited by the national Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology.
The Mississippi Polymer Institute at the Accelerator Innovation and Commercialization Park at USM has played a key role in growing the state’s multibillion-dollar, high-tech polymer industry and has directly assisted in the creation of thousands of jobs.
The Composite Materials Research Group at the University of Mississippi is actively involved in composite materials research and has developed a nationally recognized program in pultrusion research.
MSU’s Advanced Composites Institute conducts research and evaluations of composite materials, with a focus on stronger, lighter and more damage-resistant structures for aviation and other commercial applications.
Many of the companies on the forefront of advanced materials modernization are located in Mississippi including DAK Americas, SABIC Innovative Plastics, Emergent BioSolutions and others.

High-Performance Computing

The High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP), managed by the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center in Vicksburg, Mississippi, provides supercomputing power and computational science expertise to the DoD.
The HPCMP offers an open research system, providing partners access to the program’s Cray supercomputer.
Mississippi State University’s Orion Supercomputer is one of the nation’s fastest, ranking as the 4th fastest academic system in the U.S (June, 2019).
The Mississippi Center for Supercomputing Research at the University of Mississippi operates three supercomputers and provides computing resources, training, and support for faculty, staff, and students at all of Mississippi’s public institutions of higher learning.
The Mississippi Optical Network, MissiON, provides Mississippi Research Consortium institutions with 8,800 route miles of high-speed connectivity. The network’s service provider, C Spire, recently completed a successful terabit-speed test drive.

Technology Entrepreneurship

Mississippi is home to FNC, Inc., the first company to create real estate collateral information technology that automates property appraisal ordering, tracking, documentation and review for lender compliance with government regulations.
The Jackson State University Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIEED) leverages the university’s STEM, business and entrepreneurial capabilities, as well as collaborative potential for industry partnerships to address some of tech’s most pressing challenges.
The University of Mississippi’s Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) and the Mississippi State University Center for Entrepreneurship and Outreach (CEO) provide resources, programs and alumni support to help students develop and launch innovative businesses.