The three $5 million "Proof of Concept Center" awards made by NYSERDA to three institutions statewide will all operate in close partnership with our member incubators. The POCC programs aim at translating clean-energy inventions into commercially viable businesses. Serving both university-affiliated and independent inventors, the POCCs operate at the pre-company formation stage as virtual incubators. All three awardees are closely tied to our members:

• Our supporting member High Tech Rochester, which operates the Lennox Tech Enterprise Center incubator, received a POCC award to serve Western and Central New York in conjunction with academic partners including University of Rochester, Rochester Institute of Technology, SUNY Reserach Foundation, Alfred University, Cornell University, Clarkson University, and SUNY University at Buffalo.
• Our supporting member NYU-Poly, which operates the Varick Street Incubator and its associated NYC ACRE clean-energy incubator, received an award for a project named PowerBridge, which will address energy inventions made at NYU, NYU-Poly, the City University of New York (CUNY), and NYU's consortial Center for Urban Science and Progress.
• Columbia University received an award to operate the Downstate Regional Energy Technology Accelerator, a partnership with Brookhaven National Laboratory, SUNY Stony Brook (where the Long Island High Technology Incubator and the Clean Energy Business Incubator Program are supporting members of our association), and Cornell's NYC Tech Campus in New York City. Graduates of the program may be directed to residency at one of our member incubators.   

For more information, please see the NYSERDA news release. Congratulations to the awardees and good luck at generating new clean-energy enterprises!

Business incubators statewide, including many among our association's membership, repeated their strong performance in the second round of economic-development awards made by New York State through Governor Cuomo's Regional Economic Development Council initiative. Awards to our members or their affiliates include:

• $2.5 million to a regional business-acceleration cooperative led by our supporting member High Tech Rochester.
• $500,000 to our member the Central New York Biotech Accelerator in Syracuse, for fit-out with laboratory equipment.
• $7 million for a new Southern Tier High Technology Incubator in downtown Binghamton, a collaboration between our member SUNY Binghamton University and the regional economic-development community.
• $500,000 for a 30,000 square-foot expansion of biotechnology incubation facilities at our member Broad Hollow Bioscience Park at SUNY Farmingdale on Long Island.
• $500,000 for shared-use laboratory equipment at Rensselaer Tech Park, which manages our member the RPI Emerging Ventures Ecosystem.
• $500,000 for expansion of our member the Pratt Design Incubator at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and addition of a low-run garment-fabrication pilot line.

In addition, awards were made to several incubator and accelerators that are not yet members of our association (and we warmly invite them to join us!).

Finally, a $350,000 economic-development incentive award from Empire State Development was made to Dunkirk Bioenergy, a tenant-client of our supporting member the SUNY Fredonia Technology Incubator. For complete details, read Gov. Cuomo's news release or the full report on all 2012 awards.