Biden to announce photonics center in Greece

Gov. Andrew Cuomo and state leaders are vowing that a public-private partnership for the Integrated Photonics Institute for Manufacturing Innovation would exceed a $625 million investment and create thousands of jobs in the Rochester area over the next decade.

Cuomo laid out the details of the application, which has yet to be made public, in a June 11 letter to the U.S. Department of Defense, saying the institute would be the "premier international manufacturing hub and marketplace for photonics integrated circuitry (PIC) industry."

The lobbying push from state and federal leaders in New York worked: Vice President Joe Biden will be with Cuomo on Monday to announce a $110 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense.

The announcement is planned for the Canal Ponds Business Park in Greece, Monroe County, where some of the institute's business and incubators will be based. The building, at 115 Canal Landing Blvd., is a former Eastman Kodak Co. inkjet facility that the state purchased in 2013. It also houses a solar research and development facility for the New York Power Electronics Manufacturing Consortium. Research and development will also take place at local colleges, particularly the University of Rochester and the Rochester Institute of Technology, and private businesses through the Rochester area.

"By establishing a domestic industry consortium, this New York-led initiative will create a national PIC manufacturing infrastructure that is widely accessible, financially self-sustaining and designed to scale into the future," Cuomo wrote.

Photonics is the use of light, more specifically photons, to do many of the things that are now done with electrical circuits, or electrons. Photonic technology is already used in sensors and lasers and other devices that depend on light to send a signal, detect information, or communicate.

The photonics institute will be owned by the SUNY Polytechnic Institute's Colleges of Nanoscale Science and Engineering and include more than 14 partners across 20 states, including the University of Rochester and the Rochester Institute of Technology.

The institute will include investment from the University of California at Santa Barbara, the Massachusetts Institute for Technology, Intel, General Electric and Lockheed Martin.

New York is putting $250 million in the deal — $200 million to buy equipment and $50 million over five years for the institute's operations.

The White House announced the competition in October as the fifth institute of President Barack Obama's National Network for Manufacturing Innovation. The $110 million federal award will be the largest grant given to a university as part of the program.

Michael Liehr, a professor at SUNY Poly in Albany, will be named CEO of the institute, and Robert Clark, senior vice president for research at the University of Rochester, will be the chairman of the board.

"I'm terribly bullish on Rochester and my friends in the White House hear it from me all the time —we're home to innovative companies, a highly skilled workforce, world-class education institutions, and so much more," Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-Fairport, said in a statement.

Local reaction

Locally, rumors swirled early on Thursday about where the headquarters might end up.

Robert Duffy, president and CEO of the Rochester Business Alliance, said as far as he knew Thursday, the location was still in flux.

Competition for the photonics hub was fierce, but it appears that Cuomo's pledge to contribute $250 million in state funds put the local proposal over the top, he said.

"There will be a huge infusion of not only dollars, but brainpower, talent, other companies, contractors and jobs that this project and this investment will draw," said Duffy, the former lieutenant governor. "I do think this is one of a couple of game-changers that could happen."

Greece Town Supervisor Bill Reilich said Thursday that he hadn't been notified by anyone associated with the federal project, but was thrilled to hear the photonics center was slated for Canal Ponds.

"We welcome them with open arms, and if we have to, we'll even make them dinner," Reilich said. "This is huge and I couldn't be happier. It just fits in perfectly with the direction we want for the town of Greece."

Reilich said he had high hopes for the Canal Ponds complex after SUNY Poly set up its Photovoltaic Manufacturing and Technology Development facility there.

"I told my board then that during the time I was serving in Albany, I saw how the nanotech corridor there took off and it got so that they couldn't build fast enough for the boom going on there," he said. "I told the board, 'You just don't understand the potential for this,' and that we needed to get the solar project approved as fast as possible. I like to think we got the seeds planted with that and now that's bearing fruit."

Slaughter said she wants a meeting with the interested parties to discuss the location of the facility, saying she's hopeful that the governor and the Defense Department "will convene a collaborative process to that end."

Adding the jobs

To add thousands of jobs in Rochester, state officials estimated that the pool of employees would come from leveraging more than 24,000 workers already associated with its partners.

New positions will be added at SUNY Poly campus in Albany, but the bulk will be in Rochester, according to documents sent to the U.S. Department of Defense.

"It is anticipated that the hub will be headquartered in Rochester," Howard Zemsky, Cuomo's economic development czar, wrote March 31 to the defense department.

The technical and research work of the institute will be done at SUNY Poly, the sprawling nanotech campus next to SUNY Albany.

The deal will expand the nanocenter's footprint across upstate — where it already has facilities in Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and Albany. The Armonk, Westchester County-based IBM and GlobalFoundries, which acquired much of IBM's chip manufacturing July 1, are major investors in the nanocenter.

For the next generation of high-tech manufacturing and computer processing, the sector is seen as a next frontier.

"AIM Photonics is a sustainable proposal that provides the Department of Defense the best change to make a transformational investment to create an end-to-end integrated photonics ecosystem and enhance our security from threats around the world in a cost-competitive manner," Cuomo wrote.

JSPECTOR@Gannett.com

Includes reporting by staff writers David Riley and Meaghan M. McDermott.