NIST Needs Lawyers to Help Administer $50B in CHIPS Act Funds – By Aaron Boyd (Nextgov) / Jan 20, 2023
The agency is charged with issuing grants and loans, in addition to setting up new research institutes, and needs up to $10 million in legal advice.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology is playing an integral role in the latest effort to boost domestic production of semiconductors and other microelectronics—including disbursing some $50 billion in new funding—and could really use some legal advice.
The agency issued a solicitation for a nearly $10 million contract for legal services to help manage its duties under the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors, or CHIPS, and Science Act of 2022, signed into law last August.
As part of the $280 billion bill, the Commerce Department was allocated $39 billion to be disbursed to the manufacturing community in the form of loans, grants, guarantees and the like.
