Stony Brook and Regional Program Partners Receive Award to Advance Regional Manufacturing
Stony Brook University has been designated as the Long Island Regional Technology Development Center (RTDC) in the recently completed Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) competition, managed by NYSTAR, the Division of Science, Technology and Innovation of the Empire State Development Corporation.
Pending execution of a contract with NYSTAR, commencement of operations is expected in February/March, 2016. The award is $950,000 per year for five years; the total annual budget is expected to be $1.27M including the $320,000 annual Stony Brook match. The initial contract will be for a five-year period, renewable for an additional five years as NYSTAR’s federal contract for the program is extended.
The name of the new Long Island RTDC, the Manufacturing and Technology Resource Consortium (MTRC), reflects an innovative structure involving collaboration among public and private program partners across the industry spectrum, who will join Stony Brook in providing services to MTRC clients.
MTRC will be headquartered at the Composite Prototyping Center (CPC) founded by the Long Island Forum for Technology (LIFT) in Plainview — near the Nassau-Suffolk county line — with satellite offices at a subset of program partner sites. In addition to LIFT, program partners are anticipated to include ADDAPT, Broad Hollow Bioscience Park, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Farmingdale State College, the Hauppauge Industrial Association, LISTnet, the Long Island Angel Network, Nassau County Community College, the New York Institute of Technology and Suffolk County Community College; additions are welcome.
Stony Brook proposed the consortium approach to the organization of the MEP to offer a much broader and deeper array of services — without adding costs — by mobilizing the existing NYSTAR programs on campus, including the Center of Excellence in Wireless and Information Technology and in Advanced Energy, the Centers for Advanced Technology in biotechnology, sensor systems and the newly designated integrated electric energy systems CAT, along with the SUNY SBDC (Small Business Development Center) and SPIR (Strategic Partnership for Industrial Resurgence) business and advanced engineering assistance programs, as well as the management development and workforce training resources of the University and program partners.
New Stony Brook programs in additive manufacturing, complementing the CPC, represent a further program asset. Utilizing all of these existing resources will make it possible to allocate more than half of the annual program funds to project work with companies. Over 300 companies have current relationships with the campus or have worked with a campus program in the last three years.
