Letter to Charles Hagel, Secretary of the Department of Defense - Select Rochester to Compete in Final Round for Funds that Would Bring Together Business, Government & Academia to Propel Photonics Industry in NY

Letter

Dear Secretary Hagel,

We write in strong support of the proposal submitted by the Research Foundation for The State University of New York for the establishment of the Integrated Photonics Institute for Manufacturing Innovation (IP-IMI) led by the State University of New York Polytechnic Institute (SUNY Poly) in conjunction with the University of Rochester (UR) and ask that you select it for advancement to the final application round. The goal of the Department of Defense led IMI effort is to leverage existing U.S. based expertise and industrial assets to launch leapfrog advancements in new cutting edge technologies, like integrated photonics, to both create new domestic jobs and position the U.S. to be a global leader in the highly skilled industries that will dominate the world economy in the decades to come. While the IP-IMI will be managed by a team led by SUNY Poly and UR, 40 industrial leaders, academic partners, and government and trade organizations have committed as partners on this proposal and work will be performed across several partner facilities spanning the continental United States.

This proposal offers many distinct advantages. First, the IP-IMI would use dedicating non-federal matching funding to create a new open-access photonic assembly and packaging facility in Rochester, NY to leverage the internationally recognized photonics research and industrial capacity centered in Rochester which is home to the world's greatest concentration of companies, universities programs, and expertise in optics, photonics, and imaging. More than 24,000 workers across more than 100 companies are based in the greater Rochester, NY area, including 50 small and medium-sized companies manufacturing goods for the optics and photonics industrial supply chain. With leadership from UR, the region has now competitively won four major federal job initiatives to drive investment and growth in this sector. And building on existing assets like the Rochester Institute of Technology's Center for Electronics Manufacturing and Assembly and the Semiconductor and Microsystems Fabrication Lab, and the SUNY Poly Smart System Technology and Commercialization Center campus in Canandaigua, this new assembly and packaging facility will advance state-of-the-art technology and processes in photonic assembly and packaging.

Secondly, the IP-IMI will require little start-up time by largely locating and conducting research, development, and manufacturing at existing IP-IMI member facilities in New York, including SUNY Poly (Albany, Utica, and Canandaigua), University of Rochester, and Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), as well as partner sites including in California, Massachusetts, Arizona. As a result, this proposal will build existing domestic assets to create a new photonics innovation ecosystem with a geographical reach across the entire U.S.

Third, the IP-IMI exceeds the federal requirement to at least match the federal $110 million investment by a 1:1: ratio. Through its first five years of operation, the IP-IMI will have committed funds to achieve a cost share in excess of 4:1 and moreover by year eight, the IP-IMI is expected to have achieved a 5:1 cost share ratio.

This proposal will uniquely meet the goals of the IMI to create an integrated photonics chip fabrication foundry capability, integrate and standardize design tools, fabricate materials, automate new packaging processes, and validate and test advancements, all while serving as a hub to foster workforce development and education in the high-tech skills needed to compete in this industry. This new IP-IMI will be transformative in enabling now disparate and fragmented entities across the U.S. industrial and academic landscape to join together on a common goal to create the breakthroughs in integrated photonics that will make the U.S. the global leader in the leading technologies and products that will dominate the global economy. Likewise, this proposal will ensure the DoD will benefit from and foster the creation of a cutting edge domestic integrated photonics capability important to our military capacity.

Again, we are pleased to give this proposal our strongest support and respectfully request you select it and invite the offerors to submit a full application in the March 31, 2015 final application round. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

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