The AIM Proposal - The thing that's most exciting about it is the idea, frankly, we can create
a whole new industry - an industry that's based on chemical and biological sensors that
will have very, very important military and commercial applications. The Photonics industry
in the US is at a crossroads. We have lead the world in developing new photonics technologies
which serve our nations defense, communications and security needs but to stay ahead of global
competitors we need a new ecosystem to produce the next generation of integrated photonics
devices. This is an historic opportunity to revolutionize the caring capacity of internet networks
so they can transmit more data at faster speeds, enhance medical technology, reduce
the cost of sequencing the human gene gnome and improve battlefield imaging and radar
capabilities for national defense. Rochester will draw on historic strengths in optics,
imaging and precision engineering to lead the collaborative coast to coast AIM Photonics
Initiative. There are a number of assets that the State of New York can bring to the table
specifically in the Rochester area. There is the strategy of our Governor that puts
together universities with industries and enables close collaboration. There are the
tremendous intellectual assets that the University of Rochester, the Rochester Institute of Technology
as well as SUNY Poly can bring to the table all within the Rochester area., plus not least,
there is a very large number and a very dense cluster of small and medium companies that
are very capable and interested in working on one of the key problems for the integrated
photonics cluster and that is assembly and packaging. The Rochester region also has a
strong track record of leveraging federal funding to support advance manufacturing jobs
and innovation and optics, photonics and imaging. In 2012, Rochester received one of ten grants
from the Advanced Manufacturing Jobs and Innovation Accelerator Challenge to stimulate
the growth of optics, photonics and imaging or OPI companies here. Two years later it
received a National Institute of Standards and Technology Award to develop the road map
for National Institute for Photonics Manufacturing. Also in 2014 the Rochester Finger Lakes Region
was designated one of only twelve manufacturing communities by President Barrack Obama specifically
for it's leading role in precision machining and optics, photonics and imaging. The AIM
Photonics Initiative is a logical next step. It's going to enable us to address new markets
that we're currently not able to participate in. The seventy five optics, photonics and
imaging companies in our region generate over three billion dollars in annual sales and
employ seventeen thousand people. I think one of the interesting things about what's
happened in Rochester is Kodak and Xerox have downsized significantly is that so many of
the technology people who were at Kodak and Xerox, they're still here and they have spawned
a generation of research and development that goes on this community that we kind of take
for granted but it's actually quite special here in Rochester. At the same time that Kodak's
Rochester area employment dropped to fewer than seven thousand jobs from sixty one thousand,
the community itself gained a net ninety thousand jobs. Carestream Health, Rochester Precision
Optics and Optimation are among the companies that have spun off from Kodak or acquired
former Kodak units. The growth of these small and medium companies has kept Rochester competitive
says Mike Morris, CEO of RPC Photonics. There's currently sixty to eighty small and mid-sized
optics companies in this region and it's that kind of infrastructure or ecosystems that
enables you to do things very efficiently. That whole supply chain , a majority of it's,
right here already. Rochester, like in a very few places in the world, for generations people
have been doing precision optics, photonics, precision metrology. They're very many companies.
It's taught in universities and it just becomes part of the culture in the region. The ability
to innovate continues as well. The number of patents has more than doubled in the Finger
Lakes Region since 2005, even as Kodak share has dwindled. Did you know that Rochester
is number one per capita in OPI patents in the nation or that ninety five percent of
Rochester's OPI patent holders still live here. A highly skilled workforce is sustained
by eighteen colleges and universities in the Rochester region. The University of Rochester
and Rochester Institute of Technology provide undergraduate and graduate education in disciplines
that will propel our photonics industry to the next generation of innovation and beyond.
However, the industry faces a challenge in finding ways to increase yield to keep costs
reasonable. What I'm hoping from this effort is that will have an inner-play between the
industrial interests, like my own, and the university interest which are more about the
physical processes that go on when you are doing this epitaxial growth. In a manufacturing
environment we don't have that luxury. We have to grow many wafers, take the yields
we get and go on where as universities you can delve down and figure out what's going
on so that you can fix it. The Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester, the
nations first such institute, has awarded nearly half of all optics degrees in the US.
The university's faculty conduct cutting edge research in nanophotonics, quantum optics,
terahertz optoelectronics and freeform optics. At RIT, the Initiative will partner with the
Semiconductor and Microsystem Fabrication Lab and center for electronics, manufacturing
and assembly. Literally in our region, photonics may be the most important industry, close
to three billion dollars of activity is generated in the nine Finger Lakes counties. We're very
proud at the University of Rochester, the leadership, if you will, the development of
ideas in this area but it's not just idea development. The reason we're designated as
the headquarter's city, quite candidly, is because of our increasing leadership in areas
like testing, assembling and packaging and sensors. Rochester's rich industrial and academic
base and optics, photonics and imaging has a long tradition of meeting challenges. This
is a city, Rochester, which has a long history of prowess in big science and accomplishment
with corporate development. We have national leadership in optics education, optics patents.
Optics graduates are working throughout the country, many of whom are our partners in
this project.