Senator Calls for Creation of Power Electronics Manufacturing Institute in New York

This week, U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer (New York) personally called Secretary Ernest Moniz to urge the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to select the bid by SUNY College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) for a $70 million award to build a Next Generation Power Electronics Manufacturing Institute. The center proposed by CNSE will be a groundbreaking research and development network for semiconductor manufacturing, which seeks to find more effective methods to transmit electricity in cars, planes, wind turbines, data centers, and the high utility grid. The DOE grant for $70 million is a part of the President's National Network of Manufacturing Innovation (NNMI) program announced in May to promote the U.S. manufacturing sector, a program which was strongly supported by Senator Schumer.

CNSE is one of the three finalists for the award, and Senator Schumer is throwing his weight behind the bid, whose R&D efforts have already been instrumental in New York developing a highly successful semiconductor and chip manufacturing sector. The operation would be based in Albany, but various stages of research and demonstration manufacturing would take place at clean room facilities at RPI, the CNSE STC centers in Canandaigua and Greece, NY, and further research would be conducted at the University at Buffalo.

President Obama launched the program in 2012 to create regional centers based on public-private partnerships that develop advanced manufacturing technologies that would serve as job magnets; Schumer said CNSE would be a perfect match and pointed to their success in helping to attract SEMATECH and GlobalFoundries to the Capital Region. The NNMI award will allow CNSE to build what they are calling the "Next Generation Power Electronics Manufacturing Institute," designed to attract companies, researchers, and jobs in the semiconductor and chip manufacturing industries in upstate New York.

"The positive economic impact of a national energy center is difficult to overstate and it would echo throughout Upstate, from the center's home in Albany, to its manufacturing operations in Rochester and the Finger Lakes, to research operations in Buffalo and post-fab packaging in Binghamton, creating with it the next generation of middle-class jobs," said Senator Schumer.

Schumer continued, “A federally-funded New York center would keep the ball rolling for our growing semiconductor manufacturing industry and securing funds for this venture is one of my top priorities. By attracting top research talent and developing new and more efficient ways of manufacturing semiconductors, the Next Generation Power Electronics Manufacturing Institute will be like an in-house R&D arm for our existing large-scale chip fabs and should attract new companies to Upstate. CNSE’s proven track record in working with industry partners on semiconductor material R&D make it a perfect match for these funds, a point I made to Secretary Moniz. There is simply no better team in the country with such proven expertise in semiconductor materials, and I will put on the full court press to secure this award.”

Along with industry leaders such as General Electric, IBM, Ford, BNL, Raytheon, Global Foundries, Lockheed Martin, and top-tier research universities MIT and RPI, SUNY CNSE’s proposal for a U.S. Power Electronics Manufacturing Consortium seeks to develop the next generation of power switches and electronic control devices with semiconductor materials. The CNSE and MIT led consortium consists of more than 50 academic, corporate, and government members that have pledged a total of $400 million to match the $70 million award, going well beyond the dollar for dollar match requirement.