Private industry received the largest amount of federal R&D dollars among the Gulf States. In FY 1997, industry was awarded $1.5 billion in federal funds which accounts for 53 percent of federal R&D funds in the three states and 4.7 percent of the federal total for industry. Alabama firms received $1.4 bil-lion, Mississippi $99 million and Louisiana $45 million (see Table 1).

The Gulf States are home to some of the leading engineering R&D and high technology industries. Corporations such as Lockheed Martin, the Institute for Technology Development, Chrysler, Teledyne Brown, Raytheon, and Aegis Research all have R&D facilities centered on work done at the DOD and NASA facilities.

Also located in the Gulf States are the headquarters of MCI WorldCom (Mississippi), a Monsanto R&D facility (Mississippi), one of Exxon's R&D Laboratories (Louisiana), and a Dow Chemical Company R&D facility (Louisiana).