Dr. Nano didn't disappoint.

Alain Kaloyeros, CEO of SUNY Polytechnic Institute, was candid, engaging and funny at a standing-room-only question-and-answer session Monday evening at the school's Fuller Road campus in Albany.

Kaloyeros confirmed plans for yet another building planned for the SUNY Poly campus and revealed that the school wants to secure additional space in downtown Albany.

He addressed questions about SUNY Poly's rapid expansion across upstate and even the school's architecture decisions.

He even tackled climate change in his own humorous way.

"If I'm living in New York, I'm completely for global warming," Kaloyeros joked to the crowd, of about 250. "But seriously, global warming is a problem for all of us."

Kaloyeros said the next construction at the Fuller Road campus will be a mixed-use building that will connect the $365 million NanoFabX building to the $190 million ZEN, or zero-energy, building now rising.

"We expect it's going to start in the spring," Kaloyeros said of the new building.

SUNY Poly also is planning to take additional space in downtown Albany next to Kiernan Plaza, the site of the school's Smart Cities Technology Innovation Center, home to companies working on "smart cities" technology advances.

"And it will all be on the tax rolls," Kaloyeros said.

Jim O'Keefe, a local high-tech executive, asked if Kaloyeros and Gov. Andrew Cuomo were "diluting the brand" of SUNY Poly by expanding it to other upstate cities such as Buffalo and Rochester. Some have wondered if the Capital Region has suffered at the expense of this expansion westward, which has included a $1 billion solar panel factory planned for Buffalo.

"Not at all," Kaloyeros said. "What the governor is doing is replicating the (Albany) model in each region. It complements what's going on here. It doesn't take anything away from here. The research here is feeding and managing the manufacturing. It's actually strengthening the position of this region."

Kaloyeros defended the architecture and location of the $40 billion SUNY Poly campus, saying future building design had to follow the look of the original 1997 CESTM building.

He also said that the campus, located at the edge of the Albany Pine Bush, is not ideal for building vibration-free structures but that state officials liked it for its location at Fuller Road and Washington Avenue Extension.

"It's one of the worst sites for what we do because it's built on sand," Kaloyeros said. "The fact was, it's the busiest intersection in upstate New York."

By Larry Rulison

Published 11:22 pm, Monday, November 17, 2014

lrulison@timesunion.com • 518-454-5504