Utica Observer-Dispatch

The Utica area has high hopes for a nanotechnology-driven economic revolution.

But we aren’t the only ones.

Over the past two years, in addition to the major expansion of the Computer Chip Commercialization Center project at SUNY Polytechnic Institute, major initiatives for Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo also have been rolled out.

Each city is getting something different, but all are related to the growing and potentially lucrative field of nanotechnology.

“The nanotechnology explosion, revolution, has gone all across Upstate New York,” Cuomo said at a July event in Schenectady. “All outgrowths of what was birthed, but now it’s expanding and expanding to bring economic development across Upstate New York.”

The first seeds of the explosion started 20 years ago in Albany, and have been centered at the College of Nanoscale Science and Technology there.

Since he was elected, the governor has been working with officials at the college — which recently merged with SUNYIT to form SUNY Polytechnic Institute — and its Chief Executive Officer Alain Kaloyeros to replicate the Capital Region’s success across the state.

If the $7.7 billion plan works, it will make the old Erie Canal route — which established the state as a major center of manufacturing and trade — into a modern day tech corridor, rivaling Silicon Valley.

Here’s what has been announced in the past year:

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