New Speaker: Welcome back to another episode on the Upstate New York Tech Hub, a Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse collaboration on track to become one of the leaders in the nation’s semiconductor industry. And it’s all thanks to a 40 million dollar federal grant secured a few months ago.
Summary of this Episode
Guests
- Jack O’Donnell: Managing Partner at O’Donnell and Associates
- Joanne Pasceri: Director of Communications at O’Donnell and Associates
Major Topics Covered
-
-
Upstate New York’s Economic Revival – Thanks to reshoring efforts and the CHIPS and Science Act, the semiconductor industry is bringing manufacturing jobs back to Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse, positioning the region as a global tech leader.
-
Syracuse University’s Role in Semiconductor Innovation – The university is spearheading the New York Smart I-Corps (C3) initiative, coordinating research institutions and providing critical resources to help businesses commercialize semiconductor technologies.
-
Collaborative Tech Hub Development – Major research universities, including Cornell, University of Rochester, and RIT, are working together to build a shared intellectual property framework and provide small businesses access to research labs and equipment.
-
Economic Inclusion and Workforce Development – The tech hub aims to create sustainable job opportunities for local residents, including historically disadvantaged communities, ensuring broad economic benefits across upstate New York.
-
Meeting the Semiconductor Workforce Demand – With 60% of the world’s semiconductor chips currently produced in Taiwan, the U.S. must train a new workforce to support the industry’s return, and upstate New York is preparing to meet that challenge.
-
Full Transcript of the Episode
Note: This is a generated transcript. Please excuse any typos.
Joanna Pasceri 00:01
Welcome back to another episode on the upstate New York Tech Hub, a Buffalo Rochester and Syracuse collaboration on track to become one of the leaders in the nation’s semiconductor industry, and it’s all thanks to a $40 million federal grant secured a few months ago. Hi everybody. Thanks for joining us from the lobby with Jack O’Donnell. This podcast gives listeners an inside look across New York’s political and business landscape with Jack, managing partner of O’Donnell and Associates, a Top New York lobbying firm. I’m Joanna Pasceri, Director of Communications at O’Donnell and Associates.
Our Alec Lewis, Vice President and Director of campaigns, is at the mic today taking a closer look at what this grant means to Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse. Alec has a special guest, Robert Simpson, President and Chief Executive Officer of Center State Corporation for Economic Opportunity, and they are talking about how the federal grant is accelerating the growth of the semiconductor industry in Syracuse and across upstate New York.
Alec and Rob.
Alec Lewis 01:10
Hi, it’s great to have you on the podcast. You’ve been a tireless advocate for the Syracuse and Central New York business community and center state describes itself as having an unwavering commitment to economic inclusion along with community prosperity, equity and sustainability. In your mind, how do these core principles, along with others, inform the work of center state and Syracuse and Central New York?
Robert Simpson 01:32
Well, listen, I think the exciting thing for not just Syracuse and Central New York, but for the entire upstate New York corridor, is that for the first time in perhaps is as many as 5075, or even 100 years. The economic trajectory of our region is incredibly bright. There is reason for hope and optimism. We’re seeing a significant amount of re-shoring of manufacturing jobs. These are jobs that, as you well know, populated the communities up and down the Erie Canal back in the in the age of us industrialization and upstate New York, invented and manufactured and shipped products that changed the world from right here in our great state and now with this wave of reshoring of manufacturing, in particular with the reshoring of the semiconductor industry because of the chips and science act, upstate New York is back in a position of global relevance.
We are working on developing and advancing the single most important technology to the modern economy, the microchip, the microprocessor and memory, and we’re doing that right here in Buffalo and in Ithaca and in Rochester, Syracuse, Albany Utica. What a remarkable time to be doing this work, and howwe leverage that coming growth to make the lives of people who live here better, to ensure that jobs are being created for people who have lived in this community, including people who’ve been historically disadvantaged.
You know, for someone in my profession, this is a once in a generation, if not once in a century, opportunity to accomplish our objectives, which are not only to create economic growth, but to use that economic growth to empower people and humans and families to advance themselves. And it’s just a remarkable, exciting time.
Alec Lewis 03:19
Well, let’s get into the role of Syracuse in the tech hub, Syracuse University will lead the New York smart I corridor, c3 the commercialization and collaboration Center, which is meant to be an innovation one stop shop to assist businesses bringing new semiconductor technologies to market.
Can you speak to the role that you feel Syracuse University, specifically in the Syracuse region is really poised to play in advancing the goals of this regional tech hub that is again meant to have a synchronized and collaborative approach across Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Ithaca and throughout upstate New York.
Robert Simpson 03:51
You know, listen, Syracuse, obviously is, is a critically important partner of ours here in central New York region, and theyare among our region’s largest employers, a storied institution, amazing programs, including, you know, in the space of engineering and new investments that the university is making in order to help continue to build on the schools, tremendous research capability so that we can be a part of the creation of this value stream for the semiconductor industry, specifically with the c3 initiative, Syracuse University has been helping to coordinate a group of the vice presidents of research at all of the major r1 research institutions up and down the tech hub corridor, so Buffalo and Cornell and University of Rochester, RIT and beyond, SUNY, Oswego, so many others, developing one a comprehensive database of research capabilities, assets, physical lab space equipment that are available to companies who might be interested in doing research in the semiconductor space, creating shared intellectual property framework so that any company going to work with any of those institutions has a common set of principles that will dictate the disposition of intellectual property, which is something we’ve been trying to accomplish with those institutions for decades.
And finally, administering a voucher program that is going to be funded through the tech hub that will make small and mid-sized businesses it will provide them effectively, underwriting capability for time on the equipment and in the labs, and working with faculty at these prestigious universities. So this voucher program is going to help our small and mid-sized businesses who would otherwise struggle to take advantage of these great research assets and put those research assets within their reach. And the whole goal there is to empower more companies in central New York to benefit from create wealth, from create jobs, from the value stream associated with the semiconductor industry. Syracuse University has done a great job at leading that process. We’re thrilled to have them in in the lead role for that initiative. And you know, fundamentally, they’ll be collaborating with all the other institutions across the thruway.
Joanna Pasceri 05:57
I have a question for you, Rob, what are your hopes for how the tech hub can create economic opportunity in the Syracuse region and across upstate New York?
Robert Simpson 06:07
Well, listen, there are, there are a couple of very specific things, one which is, in order to, in order to meet the moment, we need to train a lot of people for the semiconductor industry’s return to the United States. 60% of all semiconductor chips in the world are made on the island of Taiwan. 90% of the world’s advanced chips are produced on the island of Taiwan. So much of the manufacturing associated with semiconductors over the last 30 or 40 years has moved offshore from the US to countries, primarily in Asia, some in Europe and elsewhere around the world.
And we now have a chance to create 10s of 1000s of jobs here in upstate New York. Right micron alone, direct and indirect, upwards of 50,000 jobs. Global Foundries is doing a big expansion in Albany, all the supply chain partners like Edwards vacuum over in the stamp business park in Batavia. These companies that are making these investments need a homegrown workforce, and the tech hub program provides somewhere on the order of $15 million to help coordinate research, to help coordinate the development of training programs the execution of those printing training programs to help support people, primarily from our disadvantaged communities across each of these upstate cities to get access to employment in the semiconductor industry, into the supply chain industry.
So job creation, I think, is a critically important piece of it, and ensuring that those jobs are accessible to as many people as possible. Second, in order to stay at the leading edge and continue to push the leading edge for the semiconductor industry, we need to invest in innovation, and that is a big piece of what we just talked about with the C3 IniIitiative, led by Syracuse University and the other ones. They’re going to keep pushing the boundaries and looking for companies that want to innovate on new processes, new sustainable replacements for certain chemicals, more sustainable materials, better wastewater recycling, whatever it may be, we want to push those boundaries of innovation so that US led semiconductor manufacturing stays at the leading edge.
And then finally, I think I feel a particular loyalty to the companies who have been here in central New York for you know, for both our long term and our recent past. As someone who moved back to upstate New York in 2003 at a point when Syracuse was really suffering the bottoming out of our economy after 60 or 70 years of socioeconomic decline, it is not lost on me that we have rebuilt this community to be a globally relevant center of innovation and manufacturing in a relatively short period of time, but we’ve done that through a lot of private sector leadership. We’ve done that from companies who who didn’t follow the trend when everyone else is moving away. We’ve done it, but from companies that have been innovative, we’ve done it with companies that have been civically engaged in helping lead this transformation and put us back on the map and finding ways to support local manufacturers and local service sector companies, to get into the semiconductor supply chain, to sell to companies like micron, to capture value from these large scale investments that our federal and state and local governments are making is, I think, not only something that is critical, that I feel like is almost a moral obligation to make sure that they can benefit, but also will really improve the resiliency of the US supply chain, the more domestic companies we have that are serving the industry.
Alec Lewis 09:30
So Rob, would you think about the future of Syracuse in central New York five years, 10 years from now? What is your big picture hope for what this tech hub can do for the community as a whole?
Robert Simpson 09:42
Well, I think let me give you an example of what the tech hub is already doing for us. And I think this is just really exciting that people need to understand. People around the world are paying attention to these designations. Over 400 communities around the United States of America applied to be designated a tech hub. Only 31 were. Elected. Of those 31 only 12 were selected for funding in the first round. Central New York, Buffalo, Rochester, our upstate New York Tech Hub is the only tech hub in America that is focused on semiconductor manufacturing, right?
Our federal government made its first in its biggest bet on this industry that we know is critical to our economic competitiveness and our national security, and they have sent a signal to the marketplace that upset New York is the place where they want to see this industry develop, and that is remarkable. It’s an incredible validation of our strategy and our collaborations across upstate New York. It’s a reflection on the leadership of people like Senator Schumer, who helped write the Chips and Science Act and the bipartisan support to get it done. But I think most importantly, what we have to you know, what we have to acknowledge and remember, is that we’ve already benefited with companies from around the world.
Back in June, we had a delegation from Taiwan who came to visit the upstate New York Tech Hub. This was before it was announced that we were winning some of the funding, but after we’ve been announced as a tech hub designee, you know, this group of companies from Taiwan, I think we got 2025, in total, traveled across the world and spent some time in Syracuse and in Rochester and talking with stakeholders in Buffalo and kicking the tires on upstate New York, that is the first of what I can tell you will be many international trade missions to better understand what’s happening with our upstate New York Tech Hub five years from now, what I want more than anything, is I want to be able to tell a great story about how many of those people working in these jobs are actually folks who’ve lived in upstate New York for their whole lives. I want our local residents to benefit from these jobs as much as possible, and I’m really confident that we’re going to be able to do that.
Two, I want to be able to demonstrate that we have helped the industry grab and maintain and push the leading edge of innovation. New York state as a whole made a bigger bet on the semiconductor industry, I believe, than any state in America. Major investments down in the capital region through the University of Albany in continued research and development of these technologies. And it is my hope that the tech hub is just going to be one more source of funding, one more source of validation for how and why New York is staying at the forefront of this critically important industry.
Alec Lewis 12:17
Rob, that’s very exciting for Syracuse. Thank you for your leadership as we work together to advance economic opportunity across upstate New York. And let me hand it off to Joanna to close out our program.
Joanna Pasceri 12:28
Thank you, Alec and Rob for that breakdown of the tremendous opportunities ahead for the Upstate New York Tech Hub a huge economic benefit for the entire state. You can stay updated with all the center state activities at centerstateceo.com and stay up on what’s happening in politics from New York to DC. Sign up for our Monday morning memo sent right to your inbox. Subscribe on our website at odonnellsolutions.com and for daily updates. Follow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, X and Threads at O’Donnell and Associates. Thanks for listening, everyone. We’ll be back from the lobby with Jack O’Donnell.
