Matthew Daneman

Staff writer

New York state plans to spend millions turning empty industrial space in Greece into what it hopes will become a hub of research into and manufacture of high-tech materials to be used in semiconductors.

Standing Wednesday in what today looks like an empty warehouse in the Canal Ponds Business Park, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that the state — along with tech companies ranging from Sematech to IBM — will jointly create the New York Power Electronics Manufacturing Consortium, to be located in Albany and Greece. The state and more than 100 private companies ultimately will invest $500 million into the consortium, the state said.

The Monroe County facility, which will act as an R&D site for companies, is expected to employ 500 when it opens in the summer of 2015, said Alain Kaloyeros, CEO of the newly merged SUNY College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering/SUNY Institute of Technology.

The state will own the consortium assets and equipment, and run it through Kaloyeros' operations. Corporations on their own "can't duplicate it, they need it, so they have to come to us," Cuomo said. "That brings companies to Rochester literally like flies to honey."

Cuomo announced the Albany half of the consortium there on Tuesday.

New York state is crazy for nanotechnology — the science of manipulating matter, including manufacturing, at the very small or even molecular level — and its potential use in new, better semiconductors.

Its efforts there arguably started close to 20 years ago when the state invested in computer electronics research at the State University at Albany, creating what is today the nanoscale science college and the 3,300 jobs there. Today, the state's nanotech-related facilities and investments stretch from the Utica area and the SUNY Institute of Technology to Syracuse's Nanotechnology Innovation and Commercialization Excelerator to Canandaigua's Smart System Technology and Commercialization Center.

Today, the Albany area is home to numerous nanotechnology companies doing research and manufacturing, computer chip makers IBM and GlobalFoundries.

"The nanoscale cluster has grown so large, it's been spreading across upstate New York," Cuomo said.

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