SUNY Polytechnic Institute in Albany was fourth in the country (after Johns Hopkins University, Georgia Tech and MIT) in engineering research and development spending with $369 million, according to National Science Foundation’s latest ranking released in mid-2015 for the fiscal year 2013.
How can it be?
A mutually beneficial ecosystem exists here, with the institute’s partnerships with companies like GlobalFoundries, TSMC, Samsung, and Intel. These companies want to reduce their costs. Nanoscale research can be very very expensive. Thus, we have the strange situation of these companies, which compete fiercely with each other in the marketplace, working together with the university to bring costs down for everyone.
The university benefits through the meaningful interactions its faculty and students have with these industry leaders.